


need one good one (to stay)

by purpledaisy



Category: One Direction (Band), Zayn Malik (Musician)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Friends to Lovers, M/M, Mentions of Past Relationship(s) - Freeform, Mentions of infidelity (not by a main character)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-09
Updated: 2017-06-09
Packaged: 2018-11-07 00:29:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 43,227
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11047530
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/purpledaisy/pseuds/purpledaisy
Summary: AU: Harry and Zayn never fall in love with the right people until their latest heartbreaks leave them looking at each other.





	need one good one (to stay)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [differentedition](https://archiveofourown.org/users/differentedition/gifts).



> I took a prompt of 'unexpected love' and combined a few of my favorite romantic comedies into a story I didn’t see coming until the end. I hope you enjoy it as much as I loved writing it!  
> Title taken from Million Reasons – Lady Gaga and the lyrics directly in the beginning are from Ed Sheeran's "Friends"

_So I could take the back road,_  
_But your eyes'll lead me straight back home._  
_And if you know me like I know you,_  
_You should love me, you should know._

  **Eight years ago -** **Holmes Chapel**

“There’s enough pressure without you staring at me.”

Zayn’s mum doesn’t miss a beat. “But it’s cute.”

“It’s not cute. Last I checked, we’re both over the age of twelve.” He presses his thumbs down on the stiff plastic box in his hands to make indents that disappear when he lifts his fingers again. “It’s not cute,” he repeats.

Not listening to a thing her son has said, Zayn’s mum lifts her camera and takes a picture of him standing in the kitchen. His face doesn’t move from the perpetual scowl he’s worn since he put on his rented black suit. “It’s just prom,” he says, holding up his hand when she goes to take another picture.

This time she sets the camera back on the counter and smiles at him. “He’s your best friend.” She crosses her arms. “It’s cute.” Zayn rolls his eyes and walks away.

He stands in the entryway with the boutonniere box in his sticky hands -- he doesn’t even know why he’s sweating in the first place. It’s only Harry.

His gaze catches on Harry’s mum’s car pulling to stop in front of his house. Harry is out of the passenger seat like a shot and it makes Zayn almost smile to watch Anne try to scurry after him, her purse and large camera clasped in either hand.

Zayn opens the front door as his mum comes rushing out of the kitchen. “Is that them? I thought I heard a car?” She doesn’t wait for Zayn’s response as she sashays back to the kitchen for her camera. Zayn is already halfway down the front steps.

“You’d think you bloody proposed to me,” is the first thing Harry says from the bottom of the stairs.  Zayn smiles down at him, waiting for Harry to meet him in the middle. The way he asked Harry to prom couldn’t have been further from a proposal; both of them lying on the couch in Harry’s guest house, passing a joint back and forth when Zayn complained about going to prom alone and Harry said he’d go if Zayn let him have the rest of the joint to himself. They brushed around the edges of the story for when they told their mums.

Harry is wearing a black jacket like Zayn, a baby pink silk tie just like he said he would, and the slight heel on his scuffed dress shoes stand to only make him even taller than Zayn – an angle that has Zayn noticing the sharp line of his jaw and the beauty mark off center near his dimple.

“Mum’s been photographing me since I woke up this morning,” Zayn says.  “I had to shut the door on her while I took a piss.”

Harry grins and pushes his hair back out of his face. It’s a mop of curls more than anything but he can’t seem to keep his hands away from his hair ever since Zayn’s known him. “Cheers, then.”

There’s a flash of cameras as their mums take photos at the same time, both boys turning to their respective mothers with harsh glares. “Just put the boutonnieres on and then I promise we’ll leave you alone,” Harry’s mum says from behind her camera. She doesn’t dare take her eye away from the viewer in case she misses something crucial.

“Guess we should just get it over with, yeah?” Harry smiles his lopsided grin and undoes the clasps on the boutonniere box he's holding. The rose inside is light pink while Zayn chose a plain white.

“Like ripping off a Band-Aid,” Zayn says, unclasping his box as well.

They both manage to get the roses pinned with little pricking of fingers, though Harry suspiciously keeps putting his pointer finger in his mouth afterwards. The photoshoot only lasts a few more moments after that before Zayn and Harry both manage to skirt away from the flashes and into Zayn’s beat up Honda.

They share a flask in the parking lot of the school before venturing inside to the gymnasium. Louis Tomlinson has another flask in the inside of his suit jacket and they all three drink that one in a boy’s bathroom.

“Can’t believe I’ll have to go to another one of these by myself,” Harry says to them as they walk down the middle of the street to Louis’s house once the prom officially ends. Louis’s mum is out of town for the weekend, something she’ll probably regret come Sunday evening.

“Aw, Haz,” Louis says around a ring of smoke, “You saying you’re gonna miss us?”

Harry rolls his eyes and takes the joint from Louis’s fingers. “Definitely not what I said.”

Zayn watches Harry take a pull, the way his lips curve and then the way the smoke filters out into the air like nothing. He knows what Harry is saying – after this, once he and Louis leave for university, nothing is going to be the same. There will be hours between them instead of minutes and time will stretch like taffy, tearing them in places they can’t yet see. He grabs the joint from Harry’s hand and inhales deeply.

It’s after two when Zayn starts to walk back to his own house, his feet walking in zig zags and lips fuzzy with a cross haze of weed and alcohol. He hears Harry’s feet scoffing on the pavement behind him before he even turns to see him.

“Your flower is broken,” Zayn says when he does turn around, his tongue heavy. He pats Harry’s chest where the white rose hangs limp, something red spilled over the petals.

“You’re a flower,” Harry says back. His voice is even slower than usual, thick with slurred vowels.

“Are you staying at mine?” Zayn asks without slowing his pace, even as Harry lags behind him slightly.

“Don’t want to make my mum pick me up this late,” Harry says. It’s reason enough.

They’re too loud opening Zayn’s front door and Harry is way too loud taking his boots off, telling Zayn to be quiet in his full-voiced whisper.

“Get on the couch,” Zayn says through his own quiet laughter, pointing like a stern parent. Harry complies easily, stumbling over his too big feet and pulling off his suit jacket like it’s suffocating him. His pants are next and he hits Zayn in the face once he frees them from his feet and tosses them over his shoulder. Zayn rolls his eyes and focuses on putting blankets on the couch – a much harder task when drunk.

“Don’t get naked,” he says without looking up. “Unless you want one of my sisters to see you in the morning.” He glances over his shoulder to Harry in his black boxers both thumbs tucked in the waistband. He pouts for a moment and then drops his hands, diving onto the couch and narrowly missing hitting Zayn in the head. Again. He flops on his back with a stupid and sloppy grin on his face that makes his dimple curve in. Zayn wants to poke it but he busies himself with fluffing the blanket from the back of the couch over Harry’s chest.

“You’re not staying?” Harry asks, his hands thrown up over his head and that stupid smile still there.

“You know where everything is,” Zayn says without bothering with another answer. He turns off the lamp next to the couch and douses the room in darkness. The porch lights slither through the slats of the curtains, ghosts of shadows taking over the floor. He’s nearly to the stairs when he hears his name in Harry’s low voice. “What?” He steps back into the room.

“Come here.” Harry pushes the blankets down to his hips and curls his finger toward himself.

“What do you need?” Zayn asks even as he comes closer.

“Goodnight kiss,” Harry says, his shit eating grin wide enough to see even in the dark.

Zayn puts one hand on the back of the couch to balance himself and then he leans forward over Harry and kisses him softly, his dry lips barely brushing Harry’s top lip. When he goes to step back, he can’t. Harry has one hand on the back of his neck, urging him forward again. They kiss deeper this time and Harry tastes like cider and smoke when Zayn licks his bottom lip and then further into his mouth. Harry tastes like home – he always has and Zayn knows he’ll miss it when he leaves. He’s never going to kiss someone who tastes the way familiar feels.

He doesn’t know if it’s normal to kiss his best friend like this, to make out on couches and against walls when they’re drunk – all he knows is that they’ve been playing this terrible game of chicken since Zayn was sixteen and they haven’t stopped.

Harry exhales against Zayn’s lips and it comes with a barely whispered moan that makes all the blood in Zayn’s body rush to his groin. Harry curls his fingers against Zayn’s hair, nearly tugging and it’s getting harder for Zayn to remember why he can’t have this all the time. Harry opens his mouth even further to him, his head pressing back on the throw pillow. Zayn lifts his leg to put one knee on the edge of the couch to get a better angle but hisses when his ankles comes into contact with the oak coffee table. He pulls back at the sting, dislodging Harry’s fingers from his hair.

“Fuck,” he says loudly before remembering his sleeping family and repeating it softer. “Fuck.”

Even through the pain he manages to look at Harry, the utter debauchery that is laid out on his couch. The blanket is pushed to his hips and his ribs pulse beneath his skin, eyes blown wide and lips kissed red.

“You okay?” Harry asks and his voice is so raspy it sounds like he’s been doing something besides kissing for the last five minutes.

“Stings,” Zayn says wincing. He glances down at the ankle to make sure no skin has been shaved off and then back at Harry as he blinks slowly from the couch. He yawns and arches his back and Zayn knows he needs to walk away and get in his bed alone. Harry is his best friend and Zayn is leaving for university in mere months. Zayn presses his hand against his pants and wills his cock to agree with him.

“I’m going to bed,” he says, backing away slowly.

“Going to bed,” Harry repeats, closing his eyes on a final drunken blink and not opening them again.

Zayn watches from the hallway, the way Harry’s breaths even out; how he’s completely unbothered by absolutely everything. How very Harry, Zayn thinks as he trudges up the stairs to his room, undoing the top two buttons on his shirt. How very Harry to not have a clue the effect he has on everyone else around him.

They don’t kiss again after that – or maybe the opportunity doesn’t present itself. Soon enough it doesn't matter, all of Zayn’s belongings are all packed into his dad’s car and he’s heading south to Leeds.

**

**Six years ago - Leeds**

“Harry’s coming up for the night.”

Zayn has ramen noodles half in his mouth and half in the bowl on the counter. He spits them all back out. “Coming here?”

Louis looks up from his phone with a blank stare. “No, going up to heaven for a quick trip, Zayn.”

Zayn rolls his eyes and goes back to his noodles. “He didn’t say anything to me about it.”

“Maybe because he told me two minutes ago and said, make sure it’s okay with Zayn too.” Louis blinks at him a couple of times and Zayn just tangles the noodles on his fork without looking up. “So?”

“What?” Zayn lifts the noodle ball to his mouth.

“So, is it okay if he comes?”

Zayn rolls his eyes again; he can never help himself around Louis. “Of course,” he says once he’s swallowed to save himself from death by ramen. “I just wish he would have told me first.”

“It always comes back to this,” Louis groans. “Someone has to find out last.”

“To be fair, it’s literally always me, though.”

Louis tilts his head back and forth, “That is fair. I’ll tell Harry you’re the _most_ excited to see him. How’s that?”

Zayn just flips Louis off and spears more noodles with his fork. Louis stands and stretches his hands overhead before going to the refrigerator. Their kitchen can fit approximately one person at all times which means he has to practically crawl over Zayn to get there.

Harry shows up in the early evening with a bag slung over one shoulder and a smile that’s just on the sweet side of cocky. He hugs Zayn before the door is even fully opened and whispers an earnest, “I missed you so much,” right into his hair. It kind of makes Zayn never want to let go. Eventually he has to because Louis knocks him out of the way to get his hands on Harry – the semantics of a three-way friendship, honestly.

“I have someone I want you to meet,” Zayn tells Harry as they walk into a pub later. It’s overflowing with students and low bass – the floors sticky with spilled drinks.

“Are you trying to set me up?” Harry raises one dubious eyebrow. “Need I remind you I go to school two hours from you?”

Zayn can’t answer before Louis is hanging over his shoulder and whisper yelling, “It’s his girlfriend, H. Zayn has a girlfriend.”

“I’ll try to keep it a secret,” Harry laughs as Zayn pushes them both away from him so he can order a drink at the bar. It’s not a good tactic as he finds himself settling the bill while Harry and Louis take the drinks to a corner booth.

“What’s she like?” Harry asks over the edge of his vodka soda bought courtesy of Zayn.

“Don’t get him started,” Louis says without looking up from his phone. “It’s all you’ll hear about.” Zayn flicks his ear and smiles sheepishly at Harry.

“You really like her, then,” Harry says with a nod and the same smile. “She’ll be here tonight?”

“Should be,” Zayn says. He presses the center button on his phone to check the time. “I told her I needed to introduce her to someone important.” Which doesn’t explain why it’s almost thirty minutes past when she told Zayn she would be there.

Harry gasps and puts his hand over his chest, “Me?” He has the audacity to look coy and Zayn kicks him under the table.

“Well she’s already met me,” Louis says, his eyes still on his phone.

“And who are you texting?” Harry asks, reaching for the phone to try and grab it.

“Probably playing a game,” Zayn says right as Louis says, “Eleanor,” with a sly smile.

“Eleanor?” Harry and Zayn are completely in chorus.

“She’s a girl,” Louis explains like they’re idiots. “And when a boy likes a girl-“

“He ignores his best friends to text her?” Harry levels a stare in Louis’s direction and Zayn fist bumps him across the table.

“She’s important,” Louis says, lifting his chin.

“More important than me?” Harry sounds offended and Zayn joins Louis in rolling his eyes this time.

Zayn’s phone flashes on the table and he answers the call while Harry and Louis throw barbs back and forth. It really is like nothing has changed between.

“I’ll be right back,” he says once he hangs up and just as he's sliding out of the booth – they don’t seem to be listening. Jemima said she’s outside and waiting for him before she comes in. He twists through the crowd wondering if she’s nervous about meeting Harry. Zayn had told her he’s about as malicious as an oversized puppy.

It takes just under ten minutes for Zayn to go outside and walk back to the table but it feels like a lifetime. He’s not sure how to explain what just happened – not sure he completely understands it himself.

“Where is she?” Harry asks once Zayn’s close enough. He leans back and forth trying to see around Zayn, “Are you hiding her?”

Zayn shakes his head and Louis seems to understand first, his eyes going wide. Harry is still grinning like Zayn is about to tell a joke when he really just feels like he wants to lay down in embarrassment.

“She’s not coming,” he says to Harry.

“Oh.” Harry’s face falls as Zayn slips back into the booth on Louis’s side. “Everything okay?”

Zayn half smiles and then scrunches his lips. “She said we’re not really working out the way she hoped, actually.”

Harry looks shocked, his lips parting into a perfect ‘O’. “That witch,” he says with a dropped jaw. “So intimidated by me she couldn’t even come in my presence.”

It startles a laugh from Zayn, a broken sound that bubbles from his lips and then gets stronger. He puts his head in his hands and only glances up as Louis crawls on top of him. “Why is this always happening?” He asks as he dodges Louis’s knee from hitting his nose.

“We need more drinks,” Louis throws over his shoulder as he walks away. “Clearly.”

Zayn stares after him until he feels two fingers tapping on the knob of his wrist. He looks over toward Harry. “Yes?”

“You okay?” He asks quietly bringing his hand back across the table. His cheeky smile is barely there now, his face more serious.

“I will be,” Zayn says. “As soon as Louis comes back with more alcohol.”

Harry smiles and his eyes light up again, “Should we find you a rebound one nighter? There’s a guy staring at you from the far corner.”

Zayn laughs and then glances over his shoulder to see who it is.

**

**Four years ago - Manchester**

“Let me get out of the car before I puke.”

Zayn flips the lock on the door and all but pushes Louis out the passenger side. “This is why I told you not to get wasted last night.”

“I couldn’t help it,” Louis says, his head between his knees. “Harry is graduating and we need to celebrate.”

“Yes, which means he was justified in taking off all of his clothes and climbing on the roof.” Louis starts dry heaving and Zayn pushes him further toward the door. “You were not.”

“Fuck off,” Louis groans just before there’s a slick sound of liquid hitting pavement.

Harry is incredibly hungover if his sunglasses and queasy smile are anything to go by but he manages to make it across the graduation stage in his cap and gown, moving much slower than the rest of his graduating class.

“I hate you both so much,” he mutters to Zayn and Louis after the ceremony and just before hugging his mum and letting his step dad cry into his shoulder for a moment. Zayn holds steady on the fact he did nothing wrong in throwing Harry a surprise graduation party the night before – Louis was the one running around with tequila like he was eighteen and let out of a cage for the first time.

Anne has rented out a private space at a hotel for the extended family and friends to celebrate for the evening though anything involving alcohol sounds like hell if you were to ask Zayn. He walks over with Louis and Harry after he convinces them both the fresh air will be good for them. Louis still manages to groan like he’s lost a limb for the entire fifteen minutes it takes to get there.

“Is Collin coming?” Zayn asks with a smirk.

“Yes,” Harry says. He’s been keeping to one word dictations as if it will keep him from throwing up.

“You mean I can finally meet him?” Zayn nudges Harry’s hip with his own, grinning. Harry rolls his eyes. He has no reason to, really. He’s been dating this Collin guy for close to six months and avoiding introducing Louis and Zayn to him like the bubonic plague. It’s not helpful that Louis and Zayn live in London now and Harry has been busy finishing his final year of school but, still.

“I really think I’m gonna puke this time,” Louis says with a lurch, his body folding in half. Harry hides his face in his hands and Zayn braces himself but nothing comes. “False alarm,” Louis declares, standing up again. Zayn is too thankful to be annoyed.

Anne’s private space is more of a private garden by the looks of it, complete with fairy lights and flowers. “Is this your wedding and you forgot to tell us?” Louis cracks his first grin of the day as they walk in.

“I really hope not,” Harry says just before getting swept into the arms of a cousin and kissed on the cheek by a woman old enough to be someone’s grandmother.

Louis and Zayn secure themselves to the food buffet while Harry mingles, eating as much as their plates can hold and being ignored by pretty much everyone else. Zayn sees when Collin walks in because Harry absolutely lights up as they make a beeline for each other. Collin is taller than Harry but they seem to fit easily as Harry’s arms fall to his waist when he hugs him. Collin tilts his head down to kiss Harry and Zayn has to look away. He can barely warn Louis before Collin and Harry are heading right for them, their hands clasped between them.

“Christ, he looks like a Ken doll,” Louis mutters under his breath before looking up and grinning as they all come together.

“This is Collin,” Harry says. “And this is Louis and Zayn, my best friends from forever.”

Zayn likes the sound of that even though he rolls his eyes like Harry is being dramatic. Zayn offers his hand and a smile as Collin does the same. Harry shifts awkwardly and Zayn can read his nerves like a book – this is important to him. “Harry has told us absolutely nothing about you but I’m sure that’s going to change pretty quickly.”

There’s a tense moment and then Collin laughs and Zayn drops his hand with another smile. He catches Harry’s eye and sees the tension easing from his shoulders. Zayn winks and let’s Louis introduce himself, tries to say, “Breathe, babe,” without moving his lips. Harry inhales and Zayn thinks he gets it.

Sometime later, Zayn is tipsy and lost, wandering through a maze of rose bushes in search of the bathroom. This, he thinks, is why they invented the buddy system - so people don’t go missing in rose bushes at graduation parties. There’s a guttural moan just in front of him and he stops dead, eyes going wide. He thinks there may be a wild animal on the loose but then he sees two bodies wrapped around each other by a yellow rose bush, kissing as though their lives depend on it.

The moon throws light on their profiles when they shift and Zayn realizes he’s staring at Collin and what must be Harry although his face is deftly covered by Collin’s hands. He’s happy for his best friend, he is – just not enough to watch him and his boyfriend fornicate on a rose bush.

He clears his throat as they move into his path, hoping they’ll notice him. It does the trick and they spring apart with red mouths and mussed hair, shock in their eyes. The only problem is that Collin looks the most shocked of all – which Zayn thinks may be because the guy whose mouth he’s just had his tongue in is definitely not Harry.

Zayn tilts his head, gives about half a second warning of a raised eyebrow, and then slams his full fist into Collin’s face and smiles at the satisfying crunch of a bone under his knuckles.

**

**Eleven Months Ago - Chicago, Illinois**

“Is she allergic to tulips?”

Zayn runs his hand along the edges of cellophane wrapped flowers. “She’s your co-worker. I think you would know better than me.”

“Aren’t tulips one of the most allergically pollinated flowers?” Michael pushes his sunglasses up on his head and squints closer at the flowers he’s holding. Inspecting for pollen, Zayn guesses.

“I’m not a botanist, so I have no clue” Zayn says with a half laugh. “But while you figure that out, I’m going to get strawberries.” Michael nods without looking away from the flowers.

The sun isn’t too hot overhead; it’s still early enough in the day. Later, it will be impossibly muggy and Zayn will be sent helplessly back indoors to wait out the humidity. He twists through the market easily, fully knowing where the stand is he wants to get to. He didn’t ever think he would be a guy to go to a farmer’s market on a Saturday but he also didn’t think he’d be a guy to move to a city in a state he hadn’t heard of in a country he’d never visited. It turns out he is both of those guys.

Hi favorite berry stand is crammed with people this morning and he slips between two people paying before he tries to navigate his way through another wave of people. There’s a family invading the aisle in front of him so he sidesteps into the other walkway and bumps right into a woman.

“Oh god, I’m so sorry,” he says, holding his hands up to keep her from tipping over.

“No worries,” she says with a bright smile that doesn’t fit in with the personality of the city. Zayn has been here for two years, he would know. She has long blonde hair that falls over one shoulder and Zayn’s eye catches on the diamond on her ring finger as she takes a step back from him. “It’s so crowded; I’ve bumped into nearly everyone already.”

Zayn smiles and shoves his hands in his pockets. “They have a Tuesday market every other week,” he offers. “It’s in the evening and a lot less people know about it.”

“Really?” She tucks her hair back behind her ear. “We’re only visiting for the weekend but that’s really good to know.” Her smile is a little blinding and Zayn can’t help but be a little drawn to the warmth in it. “Speaking of,” she looks over her shoulder and waves her arm a bit, “Babe, I’m over here.”

Zayn starts to move around her, to get back to looking for his strawberries when a voice stops him short.

“This place is a madhouse but I found raspberries.”

Zayn would know that slow, low drawl just about anywhere. He lifts his eyes to the guy winding his way through the tables with a carton of raspberries held high over his head. Harry, in a blue Hawaiian printed shirt and aviator sunglasses perched over long hair, weaves through the crowd  with a smile. He sees Zayn as he slows to a stop, his mouth opening wide and then into a grin. “Fancy seeing you here,” he says, coming even closer.

“Me? I live here. Fancy seeing _you_ here,” Zayn says with a tilt of his head. “I thought you were in Los Angeles and too busy to come visit.”

Harry’s smile is shy and he has an apology in his eyes. Time seems to have gotten away from all of them since graduating school and having to start their actual lives. Zayn isn’t exempt from the blame so he winks at Harry to let him know.

“Rylee just got a nursing job at UCLA,” he says. “We’re celebrating.”

Rylee – Harry’s mentioned her over the phone once or twice as the girl he’s dating. She’s American, he knows that much because he teased Harry relentlessly about it. He can’t get much further in his thoughts before Harry interrupts him.

“Oops, sorry. This is Rylee,” he gestures at the blonde next to him, who Zayn ran into. “My fiancée.”

Zayn drops his gaze back to the girl with the diamond ring and electric smile. “Congratulations,” he says like a gut kick reaction. “On the job and the engagement.” He didn’t know. Harry didn’t mention it in one of their three hundred conversations since he moved to LA – that he was engaged.

“Thank you,” she says, eyes glancing between Harry and then to Zayn again. “I don’t believe we’ve met before?”

“Oh, yeah. No we haven’t,” Zayn stumbles over his words. “Um, I’m Zayn.” He stops; unsure what to say next. On paper, Harry is his best friend - in practice, their lives have left them orbiting around each other since university with barely any time for a collision.

“We went to school together,” Harry says. Zayn’s heart drops. Everything they had can be summed up to five words. Harry must realize it too. “But like we’ve been best friends since that,” he says and it still sounds lame. “It’s a long story."

When do best friends stop being that way, when you forget to text on birthdays or when you’re engaged and they don’t know about it? Zayn swallows. “So you’re visiting Chicago?” Zayn says when Harry opens his mouth like he’s going to keep adding to their garbage fire explanation.

“Yeah. We’ve never been so we thought we’d come check it out.” Rylee sounds relieved at the subject change and Zayn half-wonders if his name rang a bell in her head, if Harry told her he used to kiss his best friend when he was drunk. If she knows Zayn is that friend.

“Good timing,” Zayn says. “Early June is the best time of the summer before it gets suffocating. I’m sure you already have a lot to do but definitely get pizza at Giordano’s.” He can’t believe he’s playing tour guide for Harry and his fiancée in a farmers market almost four-thousand miles from home.

“Giordano’s,” Harry repeats with a nod. “You know how I love pizza.”

Whatever was going to happen next is interrupted as Michael appears next to Zayn, a bouquet of flowers in his arm. He slides his free arm around Zayn’s back and settles on his hips. “I got daisies instead,” he says.

“Good choice,” Zayn says absently. “His co-worker is leaving for a new job,” Zayn explains to Rylee and Harry as if they care. “She’s having a little dinner thing tonight.”

“That’s lovely,” Rylee says right as Harry says, “I love daisies. Always the most cheerful flower.”

“Thanks, man,” Michael says.

“Uh, this is Michael,” Zayn says, tilting his head. “And this is Harry and his fiancée, Rylee.”

Michael extricates his hand from around Zayn to shake their hands with pleasant and generic, “Nice to meet you”. Zayn catches when Harry’s gaze drops to his left hand and he curls his fingers.

“Harry went to school with Louis and me,” he says and Michael nods.

“Louis is amazing,” Rylee says with another smile. “We visited him in New York last summer.”

“Really?” Zayn smirks, “Saw him in his proper businessman environment?” Zayn hasn’t been to see him since he moved to the states not that Louis has come to Chicago either. It’s hard to hold together what time and circumstance keeps stealing.

“Completely,” Harry says and his lips twitch in a heart clenching familiar way. There’s a quiet beat where they just look at each other, something unspoken in Harry’s face that Zayn can’t quite decipher.

“Should we go?” Michael pulls Zayn away from whatever is happening. “I want to hit the yoga studio before the party.”

“Sure, yeah,” Zayn says, reality tugging him back to his own life slowly. “I wanted to finish up a project anyway.”

“It’s really nice to meet you,” Michael says politely to Harry and Rylee.

“Always good to see you, H,” Zayn says, so honest it almost hurts. He and Michael scoot to the side of the aisle to switch places with the other two. “If you run out of things to do, text me. My Chicago bucket list is miles long.”

Harry’s Adam’s apple bobs when he nods. “We will,” he says. Again, he looks like he’s going to say something else but then Michael is nudging Zayn the opposite direction and there’s nothing left to add.

“Have a fun time at the dinner thing,” Rylee says with another smile as Harry puts his arm around her shoulder. Zayn would love a reason not to like her and he can’t find one.

Zayn looks over his shoulder as he walks away with Michael. Harry isn’t looking at him but laughing at something Rylee has just said. He presses a kiss to her head that messes up her hair and then he pats it back down with yet another laugh.

“They seemed nice,” Michael says as they start to walk away. “I think you mentioned a Harry once so it was nice to meet him.”

Once. It makes Zayn’s heart twitch in his chest. Here he had wondered if Rylee knew about a kiss when they were seventeen when he hadn’t given Michael so much as a spare crumble of information about his own best friend. Zayn huffs out a laugh. “Yeah. I just can’t believe he’s engaged.” He laughs again as he runs his hands through his hair, trying to get his mind off of Harry and Rylee and the ring.

Michael grabs Zayn’s left wrist and holds it up between their faces. “Hate to break it to you, babe. But so are you.” Zayn’s eyes fall to the dull steel band around his left, ring finger - glinting in the sunlight like an accusation.

*~*~*~*~*~*

**Now - Chicago, Illinois**

The candle on the center of the table flickers only a moment longer before extinguishing completely. The resulting curl of smoke is nothing more than a twist in the air before disappearing altogether. Zayn blinks slowly as it spreads out into the rest of the restaurant, a slow and invisible leak.

“And I think, for me, I know that I am more deserving than anyone else and I just kind of wonder when the big boss will see it. You know what I mean?”

Zayn drags his lazy eyes up to the man across from him, suddenly remembering where he is. He sits up straight and pulls on the edges of his jacket, clearing his throat. He brushes the back of his finger under his nose just for something to do while he tries to remember what they’re even supposed to be talking about.

“Sure, of course,” he settles for when he can’t place the topic. “I know when I deserve something too.” His voice goes quieter as he trail offs, weighed down by complete bullshit.

The guy on the other side of the table smiles but it doesn’t reach his eyes. “You weren’t listening to a thing I said, were you?”

Zayn swallows and reaches for his wine glass, fingers running around the stem. He licks his bottom lip and looks back at Matthew. Matthew the blind date who has bored Zayn to tears from the moment they walked into this restaurant, Matthew who doesn’t drink wine and curled his lip when Zayn ordered a glass, Matthew whose favorite topic of conversation happens to be himself.

Zayn is working on being more honest now, it’s his resolution since last week - to make up for all the other resolutions he keeps breaking. So he doesn’t lie to Matthew when he blinks once and says, “No, I wasn’t.”

He’s been taught to lessen the blow, to apologize for the truth with a smile but he’s trying not to do that anymore either. He’s trying a lot of things. “I don’t think this is really working out,” he says with a smile instead. Happy medium.

Matthew bites the inside of his cheek and shakes his head. “No. It’s not.” He turns over his shoulder to catch the eye of the waiter and motions for the check. Zayn downs the rest of his wine and takes the last roll from the bread basket. He isn’t really surprised when Matthew requests the bill to be split in two.

*

Zayn waits for Matthew to get a cab out front, waving politely as he climbs in before putting his hands in his trouser pockets for the walk back to his apartment. He can’t say that he specifically chose Giovanni’s because it meant he could walk home more quickly afterwards - he didn’t have _that_ terrible of a complex about blind dates. Still, he’s learning how to get back on the horse, so to speak, and he wasn’t overly optimistic about his first shot of it.

The city blooms around him even in the dark; cherry blossom trees arching over the sidewalk and curtseying in the street lights, stray petals waxed onto the ground with the light rain from earlier in the evening. Without intention, Zayn wanders into a bookstore on the corner drawn in by the strand of white lights twirling around the windows and the warmth of the dark wood bookshelves. There’s hardly anyone inside considering it’s a weeknight and well past normal business hours but the place seems to have found a niche of nighttime wanderers and evening shoppers. And men who have ditched off on first dates or maybe that’s only Zayn.

Zayn finds himself with three books tucked under his arm before he’s made it out of the fiction section. Out of all the addictions to have, he doesn’t think buying books is a vice. The thought crosses his mind as he tucks another mystery novel in his pile. Halfway through the poetry section he stops dead, the momentum of his walk nearly throwing him off balance. At the end of the aisle, unmistakable, is Harry Styles. He has on a brown shearling coat with inky black jeans and his hair is shorter than Zayn’s ever seen it, shaved tighter at the edges and longer on top. For a moment, Zayn thinks he’s wrong but he knows there’s no missing the curve of Harry's back or the way he pulls at his bottom lip with two fingers as he studies the back of the book in his hand.

As if he can feel the weight of Zayn’s gaze, Harry looks over and then does a double take, a smile forming as he drops his hand from his mouth. “No fucking way.”

Zayn has to laugh as Harry walks toward him like he’s seen a ghost, his smile melting into more of a smirk as his eyes trace Zayn’s face. “Visiting again?” Zayn asks, shifting his books to his other arm. “Not telling me, again?” He smirks.

Harry doesn’t miss a beat. “I just moved here a week ago, actually.” Zayn tries to dull his surprise but his eyes still go wide.

“You’re lying.”

“No,” Harry says and he smiles. “It was a very spur of the moment kind of thing. I haven’t told anyone really.”

“No kidding,” Zayn says, shaking his head. “I don’t imagine Louis could have kept that one quiet.”

Harry laughs again and bites his lip. “Probably not. He’ll be upset you found out first.”

“For all the things you’ve told him first and me last?” Zayn raises his eyebrows but there’s no heat in his words. “He can wait.”

This time when Harry laughs he runs his hand back through his hair and Zayn can see how short it really is. By the odd way it sticks up, Zayn would assume it’s a more recent cut.

“How have you been?” Zayn takes a step closer. He regrets not texting or calling Harry more often once he saw him last summer. Too lazy and too distracted but standing here now he realizes how much he misses him. His lopsided smile and terrible humor, the way he can understand Zayn with just a look.  

“Pretty good,” Harry says. He holds up the baby pink book in his left hand and waves it a bit, “Just picking up some poetry on my walk home.” His lips twitch like he’s told a dirty joke. “Same for you?”

Zayn lifts his arm weighed down with books. “Not poetry but I am on my way home, yeah.”

“You look quite dressed up,” Harry says when his eyes drop from Zayn’s books. “Interesting night pre-bookstore?”

Zayn looks down in confusion and then remembers his blazer and shiny brown shoes. All the ways he’d hoped his night would go and all the ways it didn’t. “You could say that. I was actually on a date.”

Harry’s eyebrows go up and he tilts his head, his voice going higher, “Oh, were you?” He scrunches his face in thought and straightens his head again, “Last I saw you I believe you were wearing a ring on your left hand?”

It must be a testament to their history that Harry even asks considering how taboo a question like that is in any kind of social circle. Zayn glances at his own hand, stunningly bare fingers, and then back to Harry. “It was an engagement.” Quickly, before Harry can ask more, Zayn adds, “He happened to be sleeping with our neighbor so now it’s an ended engagement.” Just the way Harry didn’t tell anyone he’d moved, Zayn hasn’t broken his news to anyone either.

Harry’s lips don’t pop into a perfect round shape and his eyes don’t go wide as though he’s seen the second-coming, he just blinks once. “Michael, right?”

“Yeah,” Zayn nods. It’s been two months but it still feels like a fresh cut to hear his name. He supposes he should be angry and vengeful at the two syllables rather than empty and a bit disappointed about what they lost.

“I only met him the once but he sounds like an asshole,” Harry says confidently.

It’s enough to startle a laugh from Zayn though it’s more out of shock than anything. He’s gotten used to apologies and awkward looks rather than upfront words. “That’s exactly it.”

Without stopping to consider, Zayn’s eyes drop to Harry’s left hand, the noticeably naked finger amongst his other rings. “And you?” He chances to ask, hoping his gaze is question enough.

Harry doesn’t even pause. “Rylee dumped me, actually.”

“At the altar?” Zayn’s word vomit seems as bad as Harry’s. He knows there wasn’t a wedding – Harry wouldn’t have missed a chance to throw a party to rival Prince William back home.

Harry’s lips twitch again. “We were taste-testing wedding cakes actually.”

Zayn laughs and bites his bottom lip to stop himself. “That’s awful timing -- I feel like there could have been a better moment.”

Harry hums and purses his lips, “I did get to eat the leftover cake once she left, though.”

They both laugh again and it seems intimate tucked between the bookshelves as it nears midnight. Roads and cities and memories and heartbreaks leading them to this moment in a city far from home. “I think we might have catching up to do,” Zayn says once the moment settles around them.

“A bit,” Harry says as his thumb runs the edges of the book in his hand. “You might start with why you’re buying loads of books instead of being with your date.”

“I ditched the date because he liked himself more than he could ever like me.”

“Thrilling,” Harry says with the same half-smile he’s had since they were kids. “I hope there’s more where that came from.” He flips his baby pink book in his hands. “There’s a place around the corner that I’ve heard has really good dessert. Would you want to join me? I’ll go out on a limb and guess you ditched the date prior to sharing a sexy piece of chocolate cake.”

“How do you know it’s good?” Zayn narrows his eyes and questioning Harry’s dessert prowess. “You’ve barely been here two weeks.”

“My editor said so,” Harry says with a slow grin. “And I’m not into doubting my superiors the first week on the job. Bad etiquette.”

Zayn laughs and feels such a flood of familiarity it almost hurts -- he’s forgotten what it feels like to be around someone who could do that to him. New friends and new relationships barely hold a candle to people who have been there for the best, worst, and entirely mundane parts of his whole life. “Well I have to go with you to find out if it’s any good now,” Zayn sighs.  “And since we’re talking about it, I could definitely go for sexy chocolate cake.”

*

 _Pilates? I thought you said pie and lattes._ Zayn snorts to himself as he reads the painted quote on the wall of the Little Beans café.

“That’s brilliant.” Harry comments, following his gaze.

“Terrible,” Zayn says with a smirk as Harry knocks him with his shoulder. He leaves Harry with his phone poised to take a photo and makes his way to the front counter. The greasy-haired cashier says they don’t make chocolate cake, which Zayn finds hard to believe but he doesn’t say that.

“Give me two of your favorites, then,” he says, handing over his credit card. There’s a loud squeak of a chair against the floor and when he looks over his shoulder, he sees Harry pushing together two arm chairs in the corner by the window.

“Sorry,” he says loudly with a raised hand, “That’s my bad.”

Zayn’s laugh turns into a cough when he finds the front counter guy staring blankly at him. “I’m sorry he’s moving your furniture,” Zayn says, each word drawn out slowly since he’s not sure he actually needs to apologize. This teenager must be the strong silent type because he hands over the sales receipt and two plates with nothing more than an upward tilt of his lips.

“They don’t have chocolate cake,” Zayn announces as he sets down the two plates on the small circular table set between the two chairs Harry has rearranged.

“What?” Harry drops his phone in his lap and looks up. “What self-respecting dessert establishment doesn’t have chocolate cake?”

Zayn laughs as he sits down in the free chair. Harry has placed their two bags of books on the ground between them. “Tell that to your editor.” He smirks when Harry gasps. “Speaking of, where are you working?”

“I’m doing features for the Chicago Tribune with a bit of editing on a music column,” Harry says. “I kind of took the job without thinking about having to move across the country - a country that isn’t mine, mind you.”

“Preaching to the choir,” Zayn says with a tilt of his head. “Were you looking for a new job?”

Harry smiles tight-lipped when he shakes his head. “No, not exactly. I was looking for a change - an escape, I think.”

“Escape from?” Zayn prompts. He wouldn’t push a complete stranger or even some of his friends to tell him more but Harry’s always had a way of spitting out half the story.

“From my life,” Harry says as if it’s obvious. “Getting dumped by the person you moved to a foreign country for does wonders for ruining a person’s happiness.” Zayn frowns and Harry laughs. “It’s only been two months but in that span of time, I’d wallowed enough to know I needed to get out of LA and find something new.”

“Two months?” Zayn raises his eyebrows. “Since Rylee dumped you?”

“March seventh,” Harry says drily. “Cake tasting day.”

“Beat you,” Zayn says with a smirk. “I found out Michael was sleeping with the neighbor on the sixth of March.”

“Shall we start a club?” Harry drops his jaw like he’s presenting an exciting award and Zayn rolls his eyes. “What’d you order, by the way?” He gestures at the untouched desserts between them.

“I’m not sure. I told the guy at the counter to pick his favorites but he seemed like a real dick so I don’t trust him.”

Zayn’s warning is too late as Harry cuts into one of the pastries covered in powdered sugar and takes a bite. He promptly gags as he swallows. “That was lemon which is inhumane to serve as a dessert.”

“Told you he seemed like a dick,” Zayn laughs and leans back in his chair. Harry tries the second bar and reports that it’s strawberry and not terrible so he takes another bite.

“So,” he says once he swallows, “Do tell, when did you find out Michael was boinking your neighbor?”

Zayn chokes on his own first bite of the strawberry tart thing and has to cough to clear his throat. “You did not just say boinking?”

Harry shrugs and takes another bite. “Mixed company.”

Zayn doesn’t see anyone under the age of twenty in the vicinity but he lets Harry have it. “Well, it was two months ago, as we established.” He rubs the space between his eyebrows, a stress headache coming just from the thought of it.

Harry hums. “Yeah, I know. But how’d you find out?”

“Curious, are you?”

“Has anyone else asked you?” Harry pushes on like he knows the answer. “Everyone’s so scared to talk about anything that has to do with heartbreak and I think it’s better to just get out with it.”

Zayn tilts his head, weighing Harry’s words. “They were fucking on the couch when I came home at noon to grab my lunch. I’d forgotten to grab it that morning and I was in such a hurry I couldn’t even react properly. I just had to throw my ring at him, along with every curse word I could think of -- and then make it back to the office to reject a few more manuscripts before I could call it a day.”

Harry’s eyes go wide as he nods along. “That sucks.”

“In two words, yes,” Zayn says on half a laugh. “Would you like to elaborate on Rylee dumping you now?”

Harry scrunches his nose, “Figured you’d turn that around on me.” He taps his bottom lip with two fingers before he speaks. “I had no idea it was coming so I was completely blindsided. I’d just taken a bite of vanilla cake with buttercream frosting when she said, ‘I’m not in love with you anymore’.”

“That’s all?” Zayn would have expected a battle royal, cake pieces being thrown across the room.

“As simple as if she was telling me she would prefer red velvet over chocolate.”

“What did you do?”

“Not much,” Harry says and when he laughs it’s a little bitter. “I wish I could say we smashed cake in each other’s faces and had like, a brawl.” His lips twitch as though imagining it. “But she just calmly got up and said she’d move out by the next weekend. I sat there like an idiot, ate through half of the cake on the table before I realized that I was fighting tears. Then I took a couple plates of cake to go and called a cab out front of the bakery because she’d driven us and she took her car when she left.”

“Harry,” Zayn’s eyebrows pull together, “That’s really depressing.”

“I realized that I wasn’t going to change her mind,” he says. He looks down at the strawberry bar and cuts off another corner. “When someone says they don’t love you, I don't think anything can really change that.”

Zayn smirks, “So my relationship ended with a bang--”

“Literally,” Harry intones. Zayn rolls his eyes.

“--And yours was more of a whimper?”

“Literally,” Harry repeats. “I cried in the back of the cab. Me and my cake samples. I’m man enough to admit it.” Zayn laughs and nearly chokes on the strawberry bar yet again. He sets his fork down on the edge of the plate and lets Harry have a go at the rest of it.

“Broken engagements aside,” Harry says once Zayn recovers, “What else can you tell me about your life lately?”

Zayn groans, “It might actually bore you to tears.”

Harry’s laugh is a bark, “I don’t know about that.” Zayn stares at him and Harry sighs. “Tell me about your job? Rejecting manuscript’s, how’s that going?”

Zayn smirks and scrunches his nose like he’s considering it and then he laughs. “It’s nice, actually. I like when I come across a good one that might really have a chance to get off my desk and onto someone more important. The shit ones can be kind of funny, honestly. You haven’t read romance until you’ve sat at my desk during a Valentine’s novel overhaul.” Harry laughs and tries to get Zayn to tell him some of the more terrible scenes but Zayn refuses.

From there, the next hour passes far quicker than Zayn realizes, conversation ebbing and flowing easily between them. Time feels like a twisted concept. They haven’t spent time in the same room in at least three years and they haven’t been alone together in much longer. It doesn’t feel stilted or like Zayn doesn’t know Harry anymore. He doesn’t know about his diet or what his favorite album is at the moment, but he knows _Harry_ , the syrupy way he talks and the way he laughs with his eyes squeezed shut.

By the time they finish the strawberry bar (leaving the lemon one untouched save for Harry’s taste test), they’re lofting Louis updates back and forth -- both of them better communicating with him than each other, though that may be more Louis’s doing than theirs.

“He’s still dating Eleanor,” Harry says. “So maybe one of us isn’t doomed to die alone.”

Zayn laughs and licks the final crumbs from the edge of his fork. “That’s a positive outlook, Haz. Maybe make dying alone the topic of your next feature story in the tribune.” Zayn’s smile turns into a yawn that he tries to stifle with his hand.  “I’m usually in bed by now,” he says with a glance at his watch, “I’m actually deep into an REM cycle by now.”

“REM cycle,” Harry repeats with a flick of his head and a drawling posh accent. “How sophisticated are you, Mr. Malik?”

Zayn rolls his eyes. “Not very, considering we all have them.”

“If it won’t completely ruin your sleep cycle,” Harry drawls over a laugh, “Do you want to see my new place? I only live a couple of blocks from here.”

Zayn wants to, he does, but he imagines having to set his alarm for the god awful hour of six in the morning and it makes him pause.

“You can meet Paul,” Harry says as he wiggles his eyebrows in what he probably thinks is a convincing manner.

Zayn scrunches his nose as they both stand, dusting stray crumbs from their pants. “Is that what you call your dick these days?”

Harry laughs and shakes his head, leading their way out of the café. “I literally hate you. Paul is my cat.” His lips twitch when he looks over his shoulder, “My pussy cat.”

“I literally hate you,” Zayn echoes after him as he follows Harry outside into the night.

*

The walk takes barely any time at all and then they’re taking the elevator up to the twelfth floor in a building that proclaims itself the “palace of Chicago” which somehow seems like where Harry would end up living on a whim.

“It’s not much,” Harry offers as an apology, pulling his key out of the lock on the door and shutting it behind him.

“You’re right, it’s not,” Zayn says when the door clicks shut behind them. He laughs when he glances at Harry. “Are you actually worried about the curb appeal of your apartment?”

Harry shrugs and tosses his key ring onto the counter. “I dunno. When Rylee moved out it seemed like she took half of the shit that was in our old apartment and then I threw out the other half in a cleaning rage before I moved. I’ve only bought a few new things since I got here. It feels empty.” He flicks on a couple of light switches as he walks into his kitchen.  Zayn lets his greedy eyes take in the rest of Harry’s place - the things he couldn’t let Rylee take and he didn’t stand to leave in Los Angeles.

It sums down easily to: not much. There’s a certain pristine aesthetic to the whole place and if it’s not intentional, Zayn would never guess. The walls have random pieces of art and there’s a book shelf perfectly full next to a record player perched on a sideways wooden crate full of records. Above the record player a couple of the vinyl sleeves are hung and there’s a certain kind of vitality added to the place from the white potted vines set on a shelf near a sliding glass door. It’s not put together with the least bit of cohesive thought but even the dark green couch seems to be a part of the haphazard design. The main room is connected to the kitchen - about as ordinary as they come - and then there’s a darkened hallway where Harry’s bedroom must be. It’s not the palace as advertised in the lobby but it’s nice enough.

“So where’s Paul?” Zayn asks as he takes a seat at a bar stool by the counter. Harry pops the cap on a Corona and slides it to Zayn before doing the same with his own.

“Probably asleep in my bed.” Harry scrunches his lips together, “He’s kind of a bed hog and he’s only four pounds.”

Zayn raises his eyebrows, “You don’t have a cat, babe. I think you have a kitten.”

Harry laughs and tilts his beer back against his lips, smiling as he swallows. “Possibly. You want to see him?”

“Obviously,” Zayn says with an eye roll. “That’s what I’m here for.”

Taking his beer with him, Zayn follows Harry down the dark hallway. There are only two doors and they take the one on the right. It’s even darker and Zayn almost stumbles over something on the ground. A moment later, there’s a click and a flood of warm light as Harry turns on the lamp next to his bed. The pristine aesthetic of the rest of the apartment doesn’t seem to apply in the bedroom - clothes all over the ground and a half made bed with a navy duvet hanging onto the ground.

“I didn’t expect company.” Zayn looks away from the messy floor to Harry’s sheepish smile as he straightens a pillow.

“Clearly,” Zayn says, toeing at a floral printed shirt on the ground

Harry ignores him. “This is Paul. See? He sleeps diagonal.” Paul the long-haired grey kitten does in fact sleep on the diagonal but even as he rolls to his back and stretches his paws up, he barely takes up more room than a throw pillow.

“I see that,” Zayn says, stepping closer. “Not sure about the bed hog thing.” Zayn pets the kitten with the tips of his finger and then presses one finger to the bottom of his paw, laughing when he flexes his paw and makes to grab Zayn’s finger.

“I feel like you’re meeting my fucking child right now,” Harry says. He rubs his hands over his face and stands up. “It’s weirding me out.”

It startles a laugh from Zayn as he takes his hand back from Paul’s curious claws. “I can see the family resemblance,” Zayn says even as Paul rolls onto his stomach and stretches up to stand alongside Harry. “He has your ears.” Paul flicks his ears like he knows what’s being said and Harry plucks him off the bed to set him on the ground.

“Thank you,” he says seriously. “We were so worried he’d end up with my nose.” Harry leaves the room and Paul is right on his heels until he somersaults over a boot and lands on his side. He pops right back up to follow Harry again but not before Zayn can make a comment about him inheriting Harry’s grace as well.

It turns out that Paul follows Harry like a well-trained show dog when he’s hungry and then forgets he exists once Harry fills his pink bowl with food and makes sure he has enough water.

“Such a good cat dad,” Zayn coos from his spot leaning against the counter. He runs his thumb along the edge of the label on his beer.

“Don’t even,” Harry says. He stands up from being knelt by Paul and grabs his own beer.

“Sorry,” Zayn says, “Pussy daddy.” Harry’s eyes bulge and Zayn starts laughing until he can’t stop even as he can tell Harry is struggling to swallow his beer, turning away from Zayn and covering his face.

“You’re obscene,” he says once he turns back around. Harry crosses the small space and pulls open the door to the balcony.

“Where are you going?”

“Outside.” He tilts his head once, “Come.” Like an obedient dog, Zayn follows.

Harry has a nice set up on the balcony though there’s not much room for more than the two of them, each in a chair with a small table in between. There’s a dead plant on the table and Zayn pokes his finger in the soil to find it desert dry. Harry watches him.

“It was here when I got here,” he says like an explanation. “I feel bad throwing it away.”

“Sure,” Zayn says with raised eyebrows, placating.

They sit in the quiet and drink their beers, comfortable again. The city sounds are masked by the other buildings and the time of night, a certain kind of ghostliness falling over them.

“When did you get Paul?” Zayn asks once he realizes he’s curious enough. He never got an animal with Michael and can’t imagine any sort of custody arrangement in the aftermath.

Harry looks over at Zayn, his beer in his lap as he taps one of his rings against the neck of the bottle. “Probably a week after Rylee moved out.” There are a couple more taps in the silence. “It was so quiet without her. I wasn’t used to being in our apartment and having it dead silent all the time.”

Zayn smirks, “And that Paul is a real party animal. I can tell.”

Harry laughs and rolls his eyes. “It was just nice to have another breathing thing in there with me. Something to take care of -- something that actually needs me.” It’s a little heartbreaking but Zayn doesn’t mention it. “When I moved here, of course he had to come with me.”

“I don’t mind the dead quiet,” Zayn says. “Michael constantly had the television on when we lived together. Like, even when we went to bed. I only ever got him to turn it off when we fucked because I do not need an infomercial about oil-free deep frying when I’ve got a dick in my mouth.”

Harry whistles lowly, “Let it all out, babe.”

“Sorry,” Zayn says. He feels the slight heat in his cheeks and covers it with another drink from his beer. “Sometimes I just remember things and it gets me going again.” He doesn’t mention that two nights ago he tortured himself wondering if Michael left the television on when he fucked the neighbor, if he even thought about the television or Zayn all those times.

“I don’t sleep anymore.”

Zayn looks over at Harry, pulled from his own rambling thoughts. “You don’t sleep?”

Harry stares straight ahead off the edge of the balcony, rings still clicking on his beer. “I go through the motions of getting in bed and then I just lay there. Sometimes I think about things but most of the time I just stare at the ceiling fan and wish I could shut my body down.”

“You don’t sleep at all?”

Harry rolls his head slowly toward Zayn, blinking slowly. “It was worse back in LA. I’d just lay there and replay a million of the conversations I had with Rylee and wonder where everything went wrong. What I had done, what was wrong with me.” He blows a breath out through pursed lips, “Heavy, huh?”

Zayn smiles but let’s him continue, knowing Harry probably hasn’t had anyone to talk with about it since he moved.

“I got up to two hours a night just before I moved and I’m getting better now. The other night I got up to three full hours and felt like a new man the next morning.”

“Congrats.” Zayn lifts his beer. Harry mimics him and the glass of the necks clink softly.

“It’s done wonders for my writing.” Harry smiles and looks straight again. “Pretty easy to push out a few thousand words a day when you don’t sleep for a third of it.”

Zayn hums and runs his hand back through his hair. “I’d say we both sound like our lives are freight trains running off their tracks, honestly.”

“We’re quite the pair, aren’t we?” Zayn can hear Harry’s smile without seeing his face.

Zayn closes his eyes for a moment and remembers binging terrible television and passing joints back and forth; sneaking out of windows and into the pub in the city while their mums were asleep. He thinks of the time in between - the way they grew up and a part, the way didn’t share experiences anymore, the way they somehow found each other again when they might need an old friend the most.

“We always have been,” he says finally, opening his eyes and finishing his beer. “Always have been.”

*

Easy as anything, they fall back into each other’s lives - as though they’d never actually left in the first place.  It turns out Zayn’s office building is on the same block as Harry’s and even though Chicago is much larger than anywhere they’ve ever lived, somehow they’ve figured out how to land right next to each other. It’s an easy convenience to meet for coffee and it always gives Zayn an excuse to eat lunch at the food carts out by the river - especially under the guise of showing Harry new places.

“So this is a thing, then?”

Harry looks down at the ground and then back at Zayn. “What’s a thing?” They’re standing on the steps outside of Harry’s office, Harry refusing to move until Zayn answers him. It’s only been a week since their reunion and Zayn has seen Harry in a gaudy printed shirt each and every time they’ve met up.

“The Hawaiian shirts, the weird fashionable dad thing. It's not just an LA trend?” Zayn smiles at Harry’s brief sound of offense. “Are those flamingos?”

Harry makes the same sound again as he runs his hands the length of his navy shirt that is definitely printed with pink flamingos. “Yes,” he says. “It’s definitely a thing.”

Zayn grins and puts on his sunglasses, “Seasonal or always?”

“I don’t know,” Harry says with a slight pout. “When I open my closet I just grab the shirt I want to wear. Are you going to keep the cross examination going or can we just get lunch?”

Zayn scrunches his lips and tilts his head back and forth, considering. “We can get lunch, I guess.”

They eat a lot of street tacos and sloppy sandwiches together, sitting on park benches or picnic tables and talking about nothing for an hour or so each day. Zayn doesn’t like to admit it but his relationship with Michael had sucked all of his time to the point where they even shared friends - and Michael, being from Chicago, had been the one to take them all with him in the break up. Zayn has work friends and one or two close friends he’s met on his own but something about talking with Harry, hanging out with Harry again, makes him feel the most at ease.

“It’s so quiet at work,” Harry says on the Tuesday of their second week of lunch dates. He’d forgotten his headphones at home, apparently and begged Zayn to bring him a pair to borrow for the afternoon when they met up.  “I feel like I can hear my own thoughts and I hate it. I can’t work like that,” he says as he shoves the white cord in the pocket of his black jeans.

Harry’s job lets him wear jeans and shirts that have flowers on them while Zayn has to adhere to a strict dress pants and button down shirt rule. He’s never been jealous of Harry’s lacking taste in fashion than on the warmer days they sit outside together.

“I can’t survive in silence,” Harry says.

“After I moved out from Michael, I had full days where I didn’t talk to another human,” Zayn says in return. Exchanging the weird leftover quirks and abnormalities of their heartbreaks has somehow become a staple in this new version of their friendship.

“That can’t possibly be healthy.” Harry tips his face back toward the afternoon sun. He squeezes his eyes closed even though he has his sunglasses propped up on his head, keeping his hair out of his face.

“Probably not,” Zayn allows. “Reading manuscripts can be a very solitary career by itself, though. I don’t even have to go to the office most days - I can work from home. It’s easier to be in the office but that week afterwards I could barely motivate myself to shower.”

Harry laughs and it comes out like a harsh bark. “I talked everyone’s ears off after Rylee moved out. I spent sleepless nights wondering where I’d gone wrong and then full hours telling strangers everything about it and hoping they’d have an answer that I didn't.”

“Did they?”

“Uh, no,” Harry says. He looks down at his lap and crumbles the paper from his lunch - gyros today - and then shrugs. “I got a lot of free drinks because people felt bad for me.”

Zayn doesn’t say he’s sorry even though he is - of course he’s sorry for what Harry is going through - but sorry is such a flimsy word that has become meaningless in the face of actual apology. “I bet you could have gotten laid out of pity a lot too,” Zayn says with a grin instead.

“Probably could have,” Harry says. He pouts his lips and scrunches his eyebrows like it’s a missed opportunity.

Zayn takes Harry to some of his favorite places for happy hour when they get off work and lets Harry drag him to some of his assignments for the paper - indie shows played in run down pubs, an opening of a brewery where they both get too drunk and Harry can’t write the story the next day. Some evenings they spend at Zayn’s kitchen table on their computers - Zayn sending form letters of rejection and Harry trying to finish pieces for a deadline.

In the years they spent growing up without each other, Harry has also grown a particular fondness for romantic comedies. Zayn can’t stand them but somehow finds himself at Harry’s apartment too often over the summer with one of the movies in the background. Most of the time he’ll browse over edits on a manuscript  or play with Paul while Harry stays glued to the storyline, laughing to himself or pretending not to cry even when Zayn is clearly staring at him and watching it happen.

Zayn almost walks out the night Harry puts in The Notebook. His idea to watch “literally anything else” has been shot down for the tenth time plus he’s hungry after skipping dinner and in a bad mood because one of the drafts he really liked got rejected by his boss and he had to send out yet another rejection letter to a deserving writer.

“It’s just nice not to be alone anymore,” Harry says as he walks back from the DVD player and plops on the couch. Zayn relaxes back into the side of Harry’s green couch that he’s claimed. “I’m so sick of doing everything by myself. Even just like, watching a film.”

Zayn has a smart remark on the edge of his tongue but it slips away. “I know,” Zayn says quietly, knowing he can’t leave Harry now.  “But next time we’re watching Batman,” he says, tucking one leg up under him on the couch.

“Spandex? Count me in,” Harry says over a laugh, pressing play on the remote.

As one month turns to two, Zayn starts to realize that in all the ways he thought he and Harry had abandoned each other for bigger and better things in their lives - coming back together as friends takes no effort at all.

*

“I’m too lazy to cook anything, will you make me dinner?”

“Hi, Harry. Good to hear from you too. I’m doing well thanks for asking.” Zayn smiles over his words, flipping on the lights to his apartment.

“Shut up,” Harry drawls back easily. “As if I wasn’t texting you less than five minutes ago.”

“You’re not being very polite for someone who is begging someone else to cook for him.” Zayn leans against his kitchen counter without taking off his shoes or removing his jacket. He has a feeling he won’t be at his apartment for long.

“Begging is taking a bit far,” Harry says. There’s a door shutting in the background followed by a tiny kitten-sized meow. “I’ve had a terrible day, are you really going to abandon me in my time of need?”

“Why was your day so terrible?” Zayn turns the light back off in his apartment and leaves the way he just walked in.

“I had to interview a band of eight year olds and they all had colds so I had to keep sanitizing my hands and now my skin is dried out from all the chemicals.”

“Poor baby. Life is so hard.”

“It is,” Harry agrees with Zayn’s sarcasm. “Anyway, will you come over and cook for me? I'll actually beg if you want me to.”

Zayn presses the down button on the elevator and waits for the car to arrive. “Spare me,” he says. “We’re getting take out, by the way. You’re actually nuts if you think I’d cook for you.”

“That’s fine,” Harry says quickly. “I’ll just be wallowing on my couch so let yourself in.”

*

“I’m going to start eating better,” Harry says with chow Mein hanging out of his mouth.

“I’m not.” Zayn spears a piece of orange chicken with a grin.

They’re both on opposite ends of Harry's couch, Paul asleep between them and at least half of the Chinese delivery place spread out on the table. Harry had directed Zayn to his drawer of takeout menus when he walked in, completely jammed with different colored pieces of paper and at least twelve from the Chinese place.  (“I really like that one so it raises the probability they get chosen when I pick randomly,” Harry explained from the couch.)

“Why are you going to eat better?” Zayn asks when Harry doesn’t offer an explanation.

“When I lived in Los Angeles, I ate healthy shit all the time.” Harry tangles more noodles on his fork with the kind of focus Zayn gives technical writing. “I loved it,” he says once he manages it. “It felt like I couldn’t turn down a smoothie for anything and I just snacked on fruit all the time -- You don’t look impressed.”

Zayn laughs, realizing his own offended stare. “It’s your life,” he says. “Drink all the green juice you want.”

“I’ll take your blessing.” He lifts his takeout container up in cheers. “Anyway, Rylee was the one who got me into it so once we broke up, I started to almost rebel against it. I haven’t eaten a salad in at least two months. That’s a big deal,” he adds when Zayn looks confused. “Anyway, I don’t think waging war on myself is the answer anymore. So I’m going to stop eating take out.”

“Are you, though? Are you?” Zayn scrunches his nose at Harry’s mouthful of noodles.  

“Tomorrow,” Harry says, his mouth still full of food.

They eat in companionable silence, the only kind Harry doesn’t seem to mind, Notting Hill making good background noise except for when Harry tries to quote it out loud and Zayn has to chuck a fortune cookie at him.

Zayn clears the coffee table of containers after they’ve stuffed themselves full and puts food in Paul’s bowl when Harry insists on remaining horizontal on the couch. Zayn is too curious not to poke around the kitchen and his eyes light up when he spot an unopened bottle of red wine. He pours them both a glass without bothering to ask for permission.

“I’m going to try to be better to myself too,” Zayn says when he sits back down. “I’m not going to stop eating take out but I’m not going to beat myself up for stupid shit.”

Harry halfway sits up, his hair somehow pointing every direction at once. The growing out phase from his haircut is clearly a difficult one for his curls. “Did I inspire you with my kale speech?”

“Lay back down,” Zayn says with a flick of his glass toward Harry. “Don’t give yourself too much credit. You didn’t even mention kale while in my presence, by the way.”

Harry melts back into the couch with the wine glass pressed to his lips - a feat that would give Zayn a blood red stain on his white t-shirt. “Good for you,” Harry says once he’s swallowed. “That’s important.”

“Thanks,” Zayn says. “I don’t want to wallow in the aftermath of a cheating fiancé for the rest of my life. Small steps.”

Harry laughs and his stomach curves down with it, his feet coming off the couch. When they land, they’re in Zayn’s lap and he notices the green dinosaurs knitted in them.

“I’m still trying to use the whole bed.” Harry adds to their growing list of things to work on. “It seems so big now and I wonder if that’s why I can’t sleep. If it’s because I miss sleeping by Rylee.”

It’s oddly too serious for the moment and Zayn swirls his wine trying to think of what to say. “I think you just miss sleeping next to someone and Paul doesn’t quite fill the gap.”

Harry hums like he’ll consider Zayn’s opinion and then goes back to watching the movie in silence. They finish the bottle of wine easily between them - Zayn mostly to numb the pain of yet another romantic comedy. Absently, he finds himself with one hand on Harry’s ankle, pressing on the knot in his bone every once in a while. For his part, Harry doesn’t seem to mind. When the credits roll, Zayn’s eyes are heavy and he thinks he could be content to just sleep on Harry’s couch.

“I have an idea,” Harry says suddenly. He swings his feet up off of Zayn’s lap as he stands.

“I know you’re an insomniac but it’s too late for ideas,” Zayn says over a yawn. Harry rolls his eyes and turns the television off.

“I have a theory and I need help testing it.” He walks off down the hallway, his socked feet padding on the hardwoods. Zayn closes his eyes to try and will some desire to move from his warm spot. It doesn’t come and consciousness slowly slips from his grasp until Harry shouts something from the direction of the bedroom and it jolts Zayn back awake.

“What do you need?” Zayn calls back as he scoops Paul up from the couch. He presses his nose into his fur and finds it funny that he smells like Harry.

“Come in here,” Harry says, starting to sound impatient.

Harry’s apartment isn’t big enough for Zayn to take his time so he’s in Harry’s doorway in only a handful of steps, a very put off, “What?” falling from his lips. Harry is lying on the bed, fully dressed with his hands behind his head. They’ve been here before, seven years ago and thousands of miles away. Zayn swallows.

“You’re drunk and tired and I want to test your theory,” Harry says.

Zayn takes one step into the room, his thumb curving over Paul’s back. “Again, what?”

“Just lay on the bed and go to sleep.” Harry rolls onto his side, his hands clasped under his head. It’s not what Zayn was expecting to hear. “I want to see if it helps me sleep.”

“This is the weirdest come on I’ve ever had happen to me.”

“Get on the bed,” Harry says sternly. He points his toes and grins, his eyes shining. “Please.”

“The things I do for you,” Zayn mutters. He puts Paul in the center of the bed and then lays down on the free side. “This isn’t normal.” He feels compelled to point it out.

“We’ve slept in the same bed plenty,” Harry says. He turns the bedside lamp off with a dull click and the room drowns in darkness.

“Remember when you threw up in my bed?” Zayn asks on a laugh. “We got drunk at Louis’s on Halloween I think.”

“I have selective memory loss,” Harry says flatly into the dark. “Very real and very sad.”

Zayn rolls his eyes. “If we’re doing this, you actually need to try to sleep, by the way.”

“You think I don’t try every other night?” Zayn sees Harry’s silhouette sit up even in the dark, “You think I enjoy being so fucking tired all the time?”

“You are a mean red wine drunk.” Zayn flops onto his other side so his back is to Harry and Paul. “Of course I don’t think that. But don’t talk my ear off for the next five hours to avoid sleeping.”

“Shut up and go to sleep,” Harry says a bit petulantly. “I can’t test my theory if you’re putting out such a negative aura.”

Zayn groans into the pillow, “I hate your hippie-speak.”

“Negativity so thick I could choke,” Harry yells out.  Zayn takes a deep breath in through his nose and exhales deeply. He closes his eyes and shuffles his feet around. If Harry wants to try an experiment, the least Zayn can do is actually get some rest.

*

Zayn’s alarm goes off automatically the next morning and he dives for his phone when he remembers where he is and sees Harry sleeping next to him. He holds the phone to his chest once it’s silenced, his heartbeat echoing in his ears. He hears Harry and Paul snoring in synchronized tiny gasps and his heart settles with the fact Harry is still asleep. Zayn doesn’t remember any of his snuffled snores from the last time they shared a bed, back when he knew Harry like the back of his hand. It’s funny the things that have changed, and the ones that have somehow stayed the same.

Zayn rolls over and looks at the two of them fully, Harry on his back with his hands flung overhead and Paul curled on his chest. He hasn’t seen all of Harry’s tattoos together and at once, the butterfly with the birds and the swirls up his arm – a nature conservancy on his skin. He studies them only for a moment before he feels like a creep and slips out of bed. Carefully, he tries to leave the room without making any noise. Harry could have slept for twenty minutes or five hours but Zayn doesn’t want to be responsible for waking him up.

He gets to work two hours later with a text on his phone from: _made it 4 hours. New record. You might need to move in._ He laughs and sends back his own response, biting his lip until the text underneath says read: _Don’t get used to it. You snore like a fucking freight train._

*

“Do I actually snore like a freight train?”

Zayn misses a step. “Harry. It’s been a week. Are you actually still worried about that?”

Harry adjusts his sunglasses on the bridge of his nose and leans against the side rail of the pier. “I am, yeah. I feel so vulnerable not knowing if you’re kidding or not.”

“It was very much like a freight train,” Zayn settles on the lie. He puts the straw of his smoothie between his mouth and winces when he drinks. Despite making fun of him, Zayn’s attempt to join Harry in eating better has been something like painful.

“Fuck,” Harry says loudly. He scrunches his lips together and pushes at his sunglasses again.

“Why are you so bothered?” Zayn asks while laughing at him.

“I imagine there will be day when I have sex again, Zayn,” Harry says dryly. “And then I’ll be wildly embarrassed if I fall asleep and snore like a fucking moving vehicle.”

“Your insomnia will be cured,” Zayn reasons.

“But everyone will hate me and I’ll die alone.”

“That escalated quite quickly.”

“I miss sex.”

Zayn snorts, “Wow, you’re all over the place today aren’t you?”

“What, like you don’t?”

Zayn rolls his eyes, “Of course I do. My hand only makes me so happy before it’s like, Oh, you again.”

Harry throws his head back when he laughs and drools some of his smoothie out the side of his mouth. He wipes his lips and coughs. “I actually had a sex dream that night you slept over.”

Zayn curls his lip, “Gross.”

Harry raises his eyebrows at him, “Our history and you think that’s gross?” Zayn shrugs and Harry presses on. “It was a really fucking good dream too. Maybe I can only sleep if I’m having hot dreams.”

“There’s another theory,” Zayn says. Harry looks at him expectantly and Zayn sighs. “You want to tell me about the dream don’t you?”

“I was like, tied up. Hands and feet to the four corners of a bed and I couldn’t see who I was with.”

Zayn starts to visualize and stops himself. He’s been attracted to Harry at differing levels since he was sixteen, imagining him tied to a bed isn’t necessary. “I get it. You don’t need to go on.”

Harry’s eyes go wide like he had gotten lost in the dream again for a minute. “I just wonder what it means.”

“It means you’re horny,” Zayn says. “Breaking news, I know.”

“I jerk off at least twice a day.” Zayn starts walking away from him. Harry cackles and follows after.

“We’re too close. I always thought it was a good relationship and now I’m not sure.”

“Are you telling me you don’t pull one off at least twice a day?”

“You don’t snore like a train,” Zayn says just to make Harry shut up.

Harry stops walking. “I don’t?”

“No, you snore like a kitten. It’s kind of endearing actually.”

“I can't believe you lied to me. That’s so rude,” Harry says as he catches up to Zayn’s steps again. “I was actually getting a bit of a complex there for a minute.”

“I apologize,” Zayn says with a fake smile before it drops off his face.

“I was going to invite you to watch a movie tonight,” Harry says. He tosses his empty cup in a garbage can. Zayn’s is still half full so he takes another sip. “Now you’re uninvited.”

“Too bad, babes. I can’t come anyway.”

“Why? Hot date?” Harry says it like a joke so when Zayn says, “Yep,” he sees the surprise written over his face. “Really?”

“Don’t sound too shocked, H.”

“I didn’t know you’d met anyone.”

Zayn pinches the bridge of his nose. “There’s a guy who coordinates the marketing for our authors. He asked me out before you got here and I told him I wasn’t ready.”

“And now you are?” Harry sounds doubtful.

“It’s been four months since I broke up with Michael. I want to try,” Zayn says. He sounds tired even to himself. “I want to start trying to date people, to remember what it can be like.”

“Good.”

“You think?” Zayn has been warring with himself over whether he’s actually ready of not – seeing how his blind date the night he met Harry went.

“Definitely.”

They’re quiet for another moment as they walk, quickly coming to the curve of the street where they usually part ways on their lunch break.

“You should go on a date too,” Zayn says. “Start trying with me.”

Harry frowns, “That sounds hard.”

“You just said you’re horny and dreaming about being tied up. It might be time to do something about it.” Zayn pokes the skin between the two birds on Harry’s chest. “Unless you don’t have the balls to do it.”

Harry scoffs, “I’m not scared if that’s what you’re implying.”

“It is indeed,” Zayn says, biting on his straw and smiling. “Prove me wrong, yeah?”

“I will,” Harry calls after Zayn turns away. “I’ll go on a date tonight too. Just you wait.”

Zayn spins around and grins, “May the odds be ever in your favor.”

*

“How was it? Tell me everything?” Harry leans forward on the table with his lopsided grin.

Zayn swallows the coffee in his mouth and scrunches his lips. “Fucking awful.”

“That good?” Harry laughs as he leans back. He crosses his legs under the table and hits Zayn’s knee with one of his boots.

“We talked about work for at least half of dinner. I felt like I was at a meeting instead of a date.”

Harry crosses his arms, his tongue poking at the inside of his cheek. “That could have been good roleplay if you decided to stick around.”

Zayn frowns and tears his croissant in half before taking a bite. He’s not in the best mood for Saturday brunch but Harry offered to pay so he found some determination to get out of bed to meet him. “Well, I didn’t. And now I can never go up to the third floor at work ever again.”

Harry’s laugh is a bark and he covers his mouth before stray pieces of his fruit cup come flying back out. “Glad that’s sorted out. Avoidance is a great coping method.” Zayn’s mouth is full of food so he flips Harry off to make up for it.  “Are you going to ask me how my date was?” Harry flutters his eyelashes and bites his lip.

“So you did ask someone out, then?” He hadn’t thought Harry would follow through so quickly. Harry nods and picks up his mug, wrapping his long fingers around the edge and clicking his rings against the ceramic. “And was it fantastic?”

Harry grins. “It was abysmal.”

“Why do you look so smug about it, then?” Zayn laughs and suddenly feels significantly better to know he’s not the only failure between them.

“We had nothing in common and I had to do almost all of the talking.”

“Wait, why did you ask her out if you had nothing in common?”

This time Harry’s smile is close-lipped and he looks up at the ceiling when he answers. “She was hot.”

Zayn smirks and goes to the other half of his croissant. “Well, hopefully that taught you a lesson about judging a book by the cover.”

“It did,” Harry says drily. “Thanks, mum.”

“I think it just takes time,” Zayn says. He’s been thinking about it for each of the two days since his failed date. The way it doesn’t seem natural to date anymore, the way it feels like an uphill battle to reach the level of intimacy he lost when Michael dragged his heart through the proverbial dirt. “I might date half the city before I decide to go on a second date with the same person.”

“Half the city?” Harry’s voice goes higher as he laughs. “You better get to work, then.”

“You know what I mean,” Zayn says with a twist of his hand through the air. “It takes time to get to a good place again, to let go of everything that didn’t work before to actually focus on something new. It’s hard to even focus on sleeping with someone new when you can’t get through a meal.”

Harry shakes his head, swallowing his coffee and setting the mug down. “That’s not true.”

Zayn tilts his head, weighing. “I mean, if you’re looking for purely sex then yeah, it’s not hard. I’m talking about going on a date with someone and then deciding to escalate it to something more.”

Harry laughs and Zayn blinks at him. “What?”

“I slept with Michelle. The girl I took out to dinner.”

“What?”

“We fucked, Zayn,” Harry says. “Had sex, mutual orgasms--”

“I know what it means,” Zayn says, glancing around to see if everyone else in the restaurant knows what Harry means too.

Harry smirks, “I know you do.” Zayn pointedly looks away.

“Is this why you’re so perky?” He asks, turning back. “You got laid?”

Harry runs his hand back through his hair and laughs. “It does wonders for my complexion, doesn’t it?”

“It does,” Zayn says with pursed lips. “You look like a real princess.” He barely ducks in time to miss the strawberry Harry tosses at him.

*

“She had lettuce in her teeth. Like, when she walked in it was already there.” Zayn had known, when he decided to try dating again, that he wouldn’t be successful right away. He just hadn’t expected to fail miserably.

“You didn’t say anything?” Harry cackles loudly in his ear and Zayn turns down the volume on his phone.

“I didn’t know what to say,” Zayn halfway yells, throwing one arm out to the side in frustration. He nearly hits a passing couple with his stray hand and he has to apologize.

“Something along the lines of, ‘Hey, I think there’s something in your teeth,’ would be good.”

“I don’t think she cared, is the thing. Halfway through she went to the bathroom and when she came back it was all still there.” Harry’s laughter is even louder if possible and Zayn pulls the phone from his ear. He almost runs into yet another person so he steps to the side, leaning back against a building.

“I feel bad,” he says finally. It’s the whole reason he called Harry in the first place -- after he safely put lettuce girl in a cab and made it one block away.

“Why do you feel bad?”

“I feel like an asshole, H. Like I’m so perfect I can’t possibly date someone with lettuce in their teeth. How fucking shallow.”

“Well, we all know the perfection part isn’t true,” Harry says, ignoring Zayn’s quiet protest. “Plus did you like her as a person -- could you see it going anywhere?”

“Not really,” Zayn says. When he had focused on the conversation it had been mostly about settling down and moving out of the city, something Zayn isn’t the least bit interested in.

“Then it’s not your fault.” Harry’s voice goes muffled and then comes back fully. “Sometimes things aren’t meant to be and that’s the way it is. You’re not responsible for it.”

“What’s going on over there?” Zayn asks when Harry cuts himself off with something that sounds like a spray bottle.

“I’m getting ready,” Harry says. “I’m going out with the guy I met last weekend.” Zayn remembers the guy clearly, the way he came up to Harry with a cocky smile and a head tilt, acted like he knew everything about him and boxed Zayn out of the conversation completely. It hadn’t been terrible considering Zayn met lettuce girl only a moment later. Her teeth had been just fine at the time.

“I forgot that was tonight, actually.” Zayn starts walking toward his place again, a bit calmer and more confident he won’t impale someone mid-gesticulation. “A bit too preoccupied with my second failing date in one week.”

“If this goes wrong, it’ll be my third.”

“Third?” Zayn suppresses the surprise in his voice. They’ve both been going on a lot of dates and somehow Harry has outpaced him at every turn.

“I went out with Elizabeth from work last night,” Harry says.

“Was it bad?” Zayn has gotten used to telling Harry each excruciating detail of his failure dates like some kind of fucked up therapy and getting the same kind of information in return.

“We just talked about work,” Harry says on a sigh. Zayn can imagine him throwing his hands up in the way he always does. “I felt like it was an extension of my day.”

“I think dating people from work just needs to be off limits,” Zayn says. “It’s clearly not working.”

“I can’t set people up as off limits when I have no prospects, Zayn. It’s counterproductive.”

“You have prospects!” Zayn fishes for his key in his pocket, letting himself into his building. “You’re going out with that guy tonight. What’s his name?”

“Stephen,” Harry says. “And I don’t have my hopes up.”

“Now that’s counterproductive.” Zayn jabs his finger into the call button on the elevator. “You can’t go into it so negatively.”

Harry hums and there’s the rattle of keys across the line. “He just seemed kind of like an asshole on Saturday. But I was tipsy so who knows, really.”

Zayn doesn’t tell him that he agrees with the early judgment – he’s letting Harry live and learn and all that. “Well, give me a call if you run away crying and I’ll come pick you up.”

“Cheers,” Harry says but he laughs so Zayn doesn’t feel bad.

“Just make sure you don’t have anything in your teeth and good luck.”

Harry is still laughing when Zayn disconnects the call and lets himself in his apartment.

*

After lettuce girl and four more dates gone awry or just gone stale, Zayn is about to swear off dating for good. He’s lying on his couch alternating between texting the girl from the weekend before - the bartender at the place he’d gone with friends from work - and throwing his phone across the room. He hasn’t completely decided what to do when his phone lights up with a picture of Paul and a call from Harry.

“Will you come to the store with me?” Harry sounds startlingly cheerful considering Zayn has only been awake for an hour.

Zayn groans at the request. “You mean get off my couch on a Saturday?”

“That’s exactly what I mean,” Harry says. “And I’m already parked in front of your building and the sign says it’s a fire lane so you may want to hurry.”

“You’re a pain in the ass,” Zayn says, hauling himself off the couch with significant effort.

“Thanks,” Harry chirps back before hanging up.

At the store, Harry takes out a perfectly itemized list scrawled on a torn piece of notebook paper. Zayn snatches it out of his hands to look it over before Harry can so much as walk through the automatic doors fully.

“What are you making?”

“Chicken parmesan,” Harry says, plucking the piece of paper back and smoothing it on his thigh.

“Chicken parmesan?” Zayn whistles lowly, impressed. He hasn’t attempted to cook something beyond noodles or chicken in months.  “For what?”

“Stephen is coming over for dinner tonight.”

“Asshole Stephen?”

Harry glances at Zayn as he reaches for a bag of lettuce in the produce section. “That’s your personal opinion, Zayn.”

Zayn may have accidentally let his perceptions of Stephen from the club slip while he and Harry were at lunch earlier in the week. Harry had kept droning about how sweet he was and how attentive and Zayn needed clarification it was the same guy -- he wasn’t trying to be malicious. Not on purpose, at least.

“So you like him then?”

“I don’t know,” Harry says. He bites the inside of his lip as they make their way to the deli counter. Zayn is pushing the cart and nudges Harry’s ass with it to make him speak again. Harry shoots him a look that says he regrets bringing him along. Zayn smiles back. “It’s hard to know if you like someone after one date.”

“You sleep with people after one date,” Zayn says drily.

“That was one time because I hadn’t had sex in ages,” Harry points out. “And we were both into it.” The lady behind the counter must pick up on the end of the conversation because her cheeks go pink as she asks Harry what he would like.

“You’re cooking for him,” Zayn explains. “You’re hand selecting chicken from the fucking deli to cook for him.” Harry stares and tilts his head as if waiting for more. “You don’t cook for me.”

“I’m not dating you,” Harry says. He takes the chicken from the counter and thanks the woman. He puts it in the cart and consults his list again.

“So you’re actually making this from scratch?” Zayn stares in amazement as Harry gets a loaf of bread to make bread crumbs and puts it next to the eight tomatoes in the cart and a plethora of spices for the marinara sauce.

“Not the cheese,” Harry says on the edge of embarrassment. “I’m just getting that out of the dairy aisle.”

“You mean you don’t have a cow in your apartment?” Zayn gasps as he starts pushing the cart again. “Shocking.”

They get the cheeses and pick two bottles of red wine while Harry muses over making some sort of dessert. Zayn crosses his arms and leans against one of the baking aisle shelves. “How am I supposed to find my soul mate if you’re out here making dinner from scratch?”

Harry laughs and shrugs. “Survival of the fittest, babe.”

Zayn gets some groceries of his own since they’re there but his staples of frozen dinners and canned soup are nothing in comparison to Harry’s choices. Eventually they make it the checkout counter, Harry checking off each item from his list as Zayn puts it up onto the conveyor belt.

“Oh shit.” He pushes his lips forward when Zayn declares the cart empty.

“What?” Zayn tries to see the list but Harry crumples the paper in his hand to keep it from him. They have a bit of a wrestling match in the small aisle, poking each other and pinching until Zayn grabs the side of Harry’s hip and sends him into a laughing tirade that releases his grip on the paper.

Harry’s cheeks go red once he’s stopped laughing and Zayn actually giggles when he realizes why. The tiny word scrawled in between two other items on the list. “Forget your condoms, eh?”

“Shut it.” Harry grabs the list and shoves it in his pocket. The line shuffles forward as the man two people in front of them finishes checking out.

“Are you embarrassed?” Zayn twists to see Harry’s face as he looks away. “You’re the one who actually wrote condoms on a shopping list between cheese and wine. How your mind went cheese, condoms, wine, in that order, I do not know.”

Harry’s laugh comes out in a bubble between his stubborn lips as he tries to keep his mouth shut. Zayn leans back against the conveyor and smiles at him. “You better go get yourself a box unless you want to come back to the store later.”

Harry stares at him unblinking and then he turns on his heel and shuffles out of the line, Zayn’s laughter following after him. “I’m always right,” he calls only to be met with Harry’s middle finger as he disappears down one of the aisles.

*

The vibrations of his phone on the coffee table make Zayn set his book down on the arm of the chair, still pressed open. He swipes his finger against the screen - _how long do you wait before you’re officially stood up?_

“Shit.” Zayn leans back against the chair and lets the phone fall to his lap. Before he can type out a response - or even think of one for that matter, his phone starts ringing.

“I’m sorry that was dramatic,” Harry says as soon as Zayn answers. His words are heavy and Zayn assumes the bottles of red wine they bought earlier have been put to good use.

“It’s not,” Zayn says. He tucks one foot under himself in the chair. “It’s fair question.”

Harry groans and it makes Zayn smile. “It’s been three hours since he said he would be here.”

Zayn pulls on a loose thread on his track pants. “Well, did you text him? Maybe he got caught up.”

Harry actually wails this time and Zayn can imagine him flopping back onto his couch. “I text him like five times. The first two were sober, the next few…” He trails off, “Not so much.”

“Babe,” Zayn laughs over the word and shakes his head.

“Don’t say it,” Harry says quickly.

Zayn pauses - he hadn’t planned to say anything, really. “Don’t say what?”

“That you knew,” Harry says. His words are muffled like he’s speaking into the couch cushion. Zayn can picture that too. “That you knew he was an asshole and I didn’t.”

“I wasn’t going to say that.” Zayn can hear the embarrassing sincerity in his voice. “He could have been nice.”

“Breaking news, he’s not.” There’s the clink of a glass against wood and then Harry’s voice is back as he smacks his lips. “This happens to me a lot, you know. Or you wouldn’t know, I guess. But I always pick people to date who aren’t very nice.”

“Hey. I’m nice,” Zayn says in protest.

“We never dated. We kissed when we were drunk,” Harry says. In the scheme of things it seems like barely a blip on the radar know, Zayn knows. “Remember Collin?”

“Oh do I ever,” he says as he tries not to laugh. He still remembers Harry coming running when Collin was laying on the ground with a broken nose and then both of them having to hold Louis back when Zayn told him what he’d seen happening against the yellow rosebush.

“He wasn’t very nice,” Harry says. He swallows something and Zayn almost tells him to relinquish the bottle of wine.

“I know,” Zayn says quietly. He’d seen it with his own eyes.

“More than that night,” Harry says. It sounds like something he hasn’t admitted before. “He’d kind of tell me the things I liked were dumb. He said poetry was prose for idiots because it was shorter than books and photography was a passive hobby.” There’s a hiccup across the line and a bitter laugh. “And I didn’t ever tell him to stop. I didn’t stand up for myself because I thought I loved him. I don’t pick the right people to love.”

Zayn’s heart breaks a little but he doesn’t know what to say. He’s always wished he could be the person who says the right thing when he’s supposed to but he hasn’t ever mastered it. “Do you have any more wine left?” He asks instead of saying words that would barely scratch the surface of what he means.

“Half a bottle.”

“Can I come over and finish it with you?” Zayn hopes it says enough.

“I can do you one better,” Harry says. “You can come drink wine and eat handmade chicken parmesan. I’ve been keeping it warm for--” he pauses and burps, “About three hours now.”

“You could have started the story with that,” Zayn says, smiling. “I would have been over in a heartbeat.”

“So I guess I’ll see you soon?” His voice sound like he’s smiling again.

*

“Why isn’t this working?”

Zayn pours more wine into Harry’s glass and then his own. “I don’t know.”  Paul is circling their feet and every once in a while his tail brushes under Zayn’s pant leg and tickles.

“What do we do?” Harry asks from between his hands covering his face.

“Keep trying?” Zayn smiles and raises his eyebrows. “Or just keep drinking,” he offers when Harry stares blankly at him.

Harry grabs his wine glass and attaches it to his lips. “That, I can definitely do.”

“Do you think we missed our chance?” Harry asks a while later when the first wine bottle is done and they’ve both opened a new one for themselves. They’ve moved from the kitchen to the couch - or Zayn is lying on the couch too full from eating Harry’s cooking and Harry is sprawled on the ground with his phone an inch from his face.

“No,” Zayn says, shaking his head even though Harry isn’t looking at him. “There’s no way.”

Harry flops to his stomach and drops his phone on the carpet. “I thought Rylee was my soul mate,” he says and then he laughs so hard he goes silent, his eyes squeezed shut. Zayn watches him for a second, considers he might be having a breakdown, and then laughs hesitantly along with him.

“I was so fucking in love with her I didn’t think I’d ever stop and she stopped like she’d flipped off a light switch.” Harry’s laughter sputters out and he wipes the corners of his eyes. “Some soul mate.”

Zayn finishes the wine in his glass and then takes a sip straight from the new bottle. “I imagined having kids with Michael and I could picture it perfectly,” he says. “I was so thankful to have found someone I wanted to spend my life with that I didn’t notice him fucking our neighbor for six months.”

“Six months?” Harry tilts his chin up to look at Zayn on the couch.

Zayn nods and through his wine-induced haze realizes he never quite mentioned that part to Harry. “It wasn’t a onetime deal,” he says, “Not even twice. Six fucking months.”

Harry’s lip curls and it’s a little off because he’s tipsy, more lopsided than anything. “Anyone who can fuck someone else when you’re the one waiting for them at home,” Harry shakes his head and scrunches his lips, “Not your soul mate.”

It’s oddly heavy for the moment and Zayn lifts his wine bottle in Harry’s direction. “Anyone who can stop being in love with you at a moment’s notice isn’t yours either,” he says quietly. Harry’s eyes drop to the floor and then meet Zayn’s again. “That’s why I think we haven’t missed our chance,” he says, remembering the earlier thread of this conversation. “We thought we had reached the finish line and we were only in the middle.”

Harry groans as he rolls onto his back again, his phone going back in front of his face. “Good to know we wasted so much time on a fucking pit stop.”

Zayn laughs and takes another sip from his bottle. Harry looks like he’s wearing lipstick from his own red wine so Zayn is sure he can’t be far behind that. “I miss the simplicity of being in a relationship,” Zayn says. “Starting to date again feels like being at the bottom of a mountain.”

“And you already know that there’s no fairytale ending so it’s hard to get up the momentum to start going up the hill seriously,” Harry says. He grabs his bottle of wine and turns it vertical against his lips before setting it back on the carpet.

“For all the rom coms you watch, they seem to be doing nothing for your romantic outlook,” Zayn notes.

“I’ll die a cynical man but at least I’ll have Notting Hill,” Harry says seriously. “I miss having someone to talk about nothing with. Do you know what I mean?”

Zayn shrugs from the couch before realizing Harry still can’t see him. “Kind of.”

“Like, if I go on a date, I can’t just go off on a tangent about the mating cycle of an armadillo because I watched a National Geographic documentary. I’d be the crazy armadillo guy they tell all their friends about for the next seven years.”

Zayn snorts and then starts laughing when he actually imagines Harry in his flamingo shirt talking about armadillo mating. “But you could do that with Rylee?”

“She would have been watching the armadillo documentary with me,” Harry says. “And if she didn’t, I wouldn’t worry about talking about it because she already knew I was the crazy armadillo guy and loved me anyway.” He sighs, “Or had loved, I guess.”

Zayn licks his lip, “Have you seen an armadillo documentary recently?”

“I did actually,” Harry says. Zayn watches Harry grin without taking his eyes from his phone.

“Anything to share about their mating cycle?”

“From one egg there are four identical armadillos born,” Harry recites like a teacher. “Quadruplets, essentially.”

“Fascinating.” Zayn reaches for his phone on the coffee table, fingers grazing it before he finally has it in his hand. He flicks to Instagram and scrolls through mindlessly. “I miss regular sex, honestly.”

Harry laughs so hard his back arches, the wine he’s just sipped sliding down his chin. He wipes the back of his hand over his lips.

“It’s not that funny,” Zayn says incredulously, pausing his perusal through Instagram.

“I know,” Harry says. He half sits up to set his wine back down and then reclines back again. “We just went from armadillo babies to sex and it took me a second to catch up.” Zayn rolls his eyes and goes back to his phone. “I do too. Miss sex, I mean. Not even the frequency but the ease of it.”

“Yes,” Zayn says, almost too emphatic for his tipsy state. He nearly tumbles off the couch. “I didn’t have to worry about being embarrassed or doing something awkward. Michael knew what I liked and I knew what he liked so it wasn’t a guessing game. We could talk about shit without being intimidated or try something without being like, kink-shamed.”

“Kink-shamed,” Harry repeats, waggling his eyebrows and shaking his hips on the floor. Zayn throws a wine cork at him. “I know what you’re saying, though. There aren’t secrets when you’re with someone that long and nothing you can say or ask for is surprising.”

Zayn leaves unsaid the elephant in the room – everything is unsurprising unless your partner starts looking for it somewhere else or decides they just don’t love you.

“Now, it’s like I can’t imagine getting to that level of intimacy again.”

“At least you’ve had sex with someone,” Zayn says. “I can’t even get a second date.”

“Not true,” Harry says. “You don’t want a second date, you could get one.”

“Cheers,” Zayn says with a smile, grabbing for his bottle of wine again. It’s already halfway empty and he finds it hard to believe.

“And yeah, I’ve had sex once in the last three months,” Harry continues on. “But it wasn’t anything to write home about and once isn’t really enough to last me.”

Zayn laughs and rolls his eyes. “Yes, I know, you’re insatiable.” He pauses for a moment, “Was it weird though? Sleeping with someone new?”

Harry hums and scrunches his mouth together. “It was polite,” he says. “It was do you want to do this, okay, cool, move over that way, orgasm, done.”

“You shouldn’t go into writing porn,” Zayn says. He clicks out of Instagram and over to Twitter.

Harry laughs. “I’m not saying it was bad or anything. Any kind of orgasm is a gold star in my book but I would like to have fun while I have sex. But I can’t really just date someone and on the first time we get in bed be like, ‘I really like it when you pull my hair. Please do that.’”

“You could say that,” Zayn says.

“It’s awkward,” Harry says. “Talking about what you like in bed is always weird until you trust someone.” He sighs, “I just miss it. I want to surpass everything and have good sex again even if I don’t get a relationship out of it.” He twists his neck to look at Zayn. “Was that a terribly shallow thing to say?”

Zayn shrugs, locking his phone and setting it on his chest. “You’re putting sex over love?”

“Yes,” Harry confirms. “Love is overrated and sex feels good.”

“Okay caveman,” Zayn says on a laugh. “Maybe you need to find someone to fuck around with but not necessarily date. Work off some of your extra energy.”

“Are you drunk?” Harry flips onto his stomach. ”That was a very sober thing to say.”

“This is now empty,” Zayn announces as he puts his wine bottle on the table. “So yes, I’d say I’m drunk. Also, welcome to the modern world, I think there’s an app for finding people who just want to hook up.”

“Zayn, you’re not listening to me.” Harry pouts his lips. “I want to hook up with someone I already know.”

Zayn sighs, “You can’t skip from strangers to being in a trusting relationship at the blink of an eye, H. You just need to find someone who wants the same thing – a good time without any strings attached.”

Harry grins, “Love that movie.” Zayn rolls his eyes. “How do I find this person?”

“Tinder, Grindr,” Zayn suggests, “The one million other places people find their hookups.”

Harry lays his cheek on the carpet and sighs again, his back curving up. “What if we just had sex?”

Zayn sits up so fast his head spins. Tipsy or drunk he needs to have his feet on the ground to process what the fuck Harry just said. “What did you say?”

Harry sets his chin on the carpet and Zayn can’t help to think he looks like a seal, his arms down by his sides the way they are. “You should be my no strings attached person.” He presses up on his hands and pulls his knees under his body to sit up. “Think about it – we’re both recovering from shit people stomping on our hearts, we both miss sex, we’re both terrible at dating, we have a romantic history,” he actually giggles over the word romantic, “And you’re my best friend.”

Zayn stares at Harry for a quiet beat. “Harry,” he says slowly, “Your last reason? Exactly why that shouldn’t happen.”

Harry crawls closer until he’s on his knees right next to Zayn’s legs and in a very compromising position for the conversation they’re evidently having. “It’s not going to change anything,” Harry says. “It’s just sex.”

Zayn laughs and shakes his head, “Babe. Sex changes everything.”

“It doesn’t have to.” Harry licks his bottom lip. His eyes are shining and Zayn thinks he may be joking, trying to freak Zayn out.

Zayn stands up and shakes his head. He takes two steps away from Harry. “We’re not doing this.” He rolls his eyes as he collects his wine bottle and glass from the table. “We’re drunk and having a stupid conversation.”

Harry swallows and collapses back onto his back laughing. “Zayn, why won’t anyone have sex with me? Why won’t anyone date me? Why does no one love me?” Each question builds in intensity until Harry is practically yelling, his laughter dancing right through his words.

Zayn doesn’t answer as he puts his glass in the sink and runs water in the bottle. His lips are fuzzy and his eyes are heavy as he makes his way back to Harry. He sits down on the floor next to him, his hand automatically running through Harry’s hair and twisting the shorter pieces around his fingers.

“I love you,” he says with a hopeful lilt to his voice. “Does that make you feel any better?”

“You love me and still won’t fuck me,” Harry says but he’s grinning as if to say everything is still okay. “My life is tragic.”

“I know it is, love.” Zayn pats Harry’s cheek and leaves his hand there, thumb smoothing the high curve of Harry's cheekbone.

*

It’s all Louis’s fault if it goes wrong.

Zayn takes his phone out of the pocket of his trousers and sends Louis a text that says just that.

The sun is barely setting over the city as Zayn climbs into the cab out front of his building. He adjusts his jacket once he’s in the seat, his knee bouncing a bit erratically considering he’s only going on a date and not heading to war. Harry sends him a text to say he’s on his way to the restaurant too and Zayn tries his best to just relax; Easier said than done as with most everything else in his life.

“Let me set you up,” Louis had said when he and Harry had recounted their latest forays into dating like a bad sitcom over a video chat the weekend before. Harry groaned and Zayn shook his head but Louis was undeterred.  “Neither one of you is picking anyone good, clearly. Eleanor’s sister is from Chicago, I’ll just see if she has someone you can take to dinner.” He seemed to get more enthusiastic throughout the call, planning to set up blind dates for both of them and then altering the plan so the dates would be at the same time - a group date. “It’s going to be so awkward,” Harry yelled as Zayn covered his face with his hands and Louis cackled as he disconnected the call. “I’ll try anything once,” Harry said with a frown, “But this sounds like the beginning of a nightmare.”

Zayn gets his bearings once the cab drops him off in front of Mazzi’s - an Italian place downtown. There’d been some back and forth in the past week about where they should have dinner though Zayn finally won out on suggesting a place he’s been to before rather than Harry’s endless list of places Zayn has never actually heard of.  He straightens his blazer and clasps the middle button before going in.

“You’re not the first of your party here,” the hostess says with a smile that shouldn’t send Zayn’s stomach in a nose dive the way it does.

“Great,” is what he says out loud, following her further into the restaurant. He has the fleeting nightmare question of who is already at the restaurant waiting at their table followed by a swooping sensation that he might be abandoned alone with both blind dates before Harry arrives. He can nearly feel his palms secreting sweat until he turns the final corner to find Harry sitting in a booth by the window, fiddling with the rolled silverware and pulling at his hair every once in a while.

“Well don’t you look lovely,” Zayn drawls once the hostess leaves him, realizing he’s spotted his party.

Harry visibly jolts as he looks over and then exhales through pursed lips. “You scared me,” he says with one hand over his heart as Zayn slides into the booth across from him. “Thank you, though.” He tugs at the shoulder of his floral button-down shirt. The top couple of buttons are undone but not enough to show off his tattoos and he’s shaved the disjointed scruff on his jaw he had the last time Zayn saw him.

“I’ve been dreading this all day,” Zayn admits. “I couldn’t focus on work because it was all I thought about.”

Harry laughs and clasps his hands on the table. “Me too.  I wrote a feature today that may be gibberish when I have the time to read it back tomorrow.”

“Nervous?” Zayn sips from the glass of water sitting in front of him.

“I don’t know,” Harry says with a shrug. “Not getting my hopes up?”

Zayn smiles and nods. “Watch you meet your soul mate while I’m stuck with someone terrible.”

Harry half-smiles, his dimple curving in. “Worst case scenario, we fake a mutual emergency and bail.”

Zayn laughs so hard he snorts, “What in the world would be a mutual emergency?”

Before Harry can even answer, the hostess is back with a sweet smile. “The rest of your party has arrived.” Zayn looks over her shoulder to the two people standing there and tries his best not to let the smile slip from his face.

*

“It was lovely to meet you,” Zayn says as he presses a kiss to Stephanie’s cheek. Her hand moves from his forearm to his hand and she squeezes once. Her rings press hard against Zayn’s fingers but then she lets go, reaching for the door to the cab.

“I’d love to see you again,” she says with a soft smile.

“Sounds good.” He pushes his hands down into his pockets and takes a step back. He feels like an idiot for not saying the same but he won’t make a promise he can’t keep. Stephanie is all kinds of lovely - perfectly kind and ambitious - but there isn’t any sort of magnetism between them. He lifts his hand to wave as she gets in the car and keeps it up as she pulls away.

For a moment, he’s not sure where to go. He and Stephanie had left before Richard and Harry but part way through waiting for her cab, he’d seen the other two come outside and skirt to the edge of the building. Now, they’re standing on the corner, clearly exchanging numbers as Richard runs his hand up and down Harry’s arm like he’s a Persian cat instead of a guy. Zayn swallows and looks away, ignoring the tightening pit in his stomach. Maybe he shouldn’t have turned down Stephanie’s request to go back to hers for a drink, maybe then he wouldn’t have to watch Harry and Richard flirt on the sidewalk because now Harry’s laughing with his head thrown back and Richard looks like he wants to eat him.

Only a split second before Zayn turns to go home, Harry is backing away from the corner and waving, Richard doing the same in the opposite direction. When Harry actually turns to Zayn, he’s grinning, his hands in the pockets of his jacket.

“What has you so smiley?” Zayn asks as Harry catches up to him, both of them starting to walk at the same time, neither with a destination in mind.

“Well, that wasn’t terrible was it?”

“No,” Zayn says, matching Harry’s smile.  “Maybe our luck is changing.” Harry does an abysmal impression of Bob Dylan’s tune of similar sentiment and Zayn kicks his ankle to make him stop--It only kind of works because Harry almost falls on his face. At least the singing goes quiet.

“What did you think of Richard?” Harry asks once he catches his feet again.

“Asking for a second opinion, eh?” Zayn smirks, “Doubting yourself?”

“No.” Harry shrugs and scrunches his lips. “Just figured it would be good to ask since you were sitting a foot from us the entire night.”

They pause at a crosswalk and Zayn laughs. “I was a bit consumed with my own date, to be honest.”

It’s not true.

He had been intrigued by Stephanie and invested in their conversation but every once in a while he had found his attention wandering across the table. Richard was older than everyone at the table by close to ten years and he steadily leaned closer to Harry throughout the night. When Harry would speak, Richard seemed only to watch his mouth and Zayn got a gross feeling rather than an endearing one. Every time Harry laughed it was overdone and lingering over manic - Zayn couldn’t remember ever hearing him laugh like that before. He has no idea how to say any of that out loud without sounding like a jealous ex from a long buried past.

“Stephanie seemed very nice,” Harry says as they start crossing the street. “She’s a teacher?”

“Yeah,” Zayn says. “I liked her. I can’t figure out why I’m not back at her apartment right now, actually.” He laughs and shakes his head. “I’ve spent a full month complaining about shit prospects and finally a girl comes along who is perfectly nice and I put her in a cab with a, ‘Sounds good’, rather than making plans to see her again.”

“You can always call and make it up to her on a second date. Phones do exist, you know.”

Zayn’s laughter edges on bitter. “I don’t want to, is the thing. I have no desire to chase a cab through the city and find her.”

“After what you just said?” Harry glances over at him. “Why not?”

“There wasn’t like...a spark.” He feels foolish for saying it out loud and his cheeks heat with color.

“And you say you don’t like romantic comedies,” Harry says with a wide grin. Zayn rolls his eyes. “Anyway, back to me, how about Richard?”

Zayn sighs. “I don’t know, H. It’s up to you.”

“Do you think I should call him?”

“It’s your decision,” Zayn says.

“He said I could even call him tonight and he would meet me anywhere I wanted.”

Zayn presses at the spot between his eyes where he’s starting to get a headache. Maybe he drank too much wine. “I don’t know the guy, do I? If you want to see him again, you should.”

“Really?” Harry raises his eyebrows and tilts his head to the side.

“Yes, really.” Harry stops walking and Zayn stops as well, staring at him. “What do you want me to say?”

“I want you to say why you were shooting fucking daggers with your eyes at him all through dinner.”

Zayn’s mouth drops open without permission. “I was not.” Defiance drips over each syllable.

“If you had laser beams for eyes, we’d have been toasted.” Harry smiles over his words and Zayn tries his best not to laugh, though something like one slips out anyway.

“I didn’t mean to do that,” Zayn says. “Really.”

“So I can call him right now and you’d be perfectly happy with it?” Harry takes a step closer, the toes of his shoes meeting Zayn’s. It feels like a dare.

“Yes.” Zayn bites the word.

Harry swallows and something in his eyes dim. “Okay, maybe I will.”

Zayn nods and watches Harry pull his phone from the inside of his jacket. They’re still unmoving on the sidewalk, the evening crowd divulging around them like haphazard rocks in a moving river. “You’re doing it right now.”

“Sure, if that’s what you want.”

“I didn’t say that.” Zayn watches Harry’s long fingers on the screen of his phone typing in the passcode and then touching on the contact icon. “I said if you want to, you should.”

“I know,” Harry says. “But I take what my best friend says to heart and if you think there’s nothing wrong with me calling him then I think I will.”

His thumb hovers over Richard Brotwell before Zayn finally breaks. “Fuck. Don’t.” He takes the phone from Harry and takes a step back.

Harry’s eyes light up again, his lips parting. “What?”

“He’s too old for you,” Zayn says shaking his head. “And not in an ageist way but in the way he looks at you like a trophy to be coveted rather than a person he could be with. He looked at you like a piece of fucking meat and I don’t think he has good intentions to actually care about you. And I could be wrong but you said that you don’t always pick the good people to like and maybe you don’t so I’m looking out for you.”

Harry licks his bottom lip, his pink tongue darting out. “Why?”

“Because you’re my best friend, Harry and I’m not going to sit by while some douche bag breaks your heart because you’re hotter than his ex.”

There’s a moment where Zayn thinks he might get slapped across his face. Harry’s eyes narrow and his lips press in a tight line. As quick as it comes, it bursts into confetti courtesy of a grin from Harry and a cackling laugh that has more than a few people pausing to stare.

“What the fuck?” Zayn turns and walks back the way they’d come originally, echoes of Harry’s laughter chasing him. The echoes quiet into giggles and then Harry is right next to Zayn, matching his steps again.

Harry laughs again, undeterred by Zayn’s shift in mood. “Of course I know the guy is a dick. He was groping my thigh before we even got the main dish and I don’t think he listened to a thing I said. It’s just nice to know you care, is all.”

Zayn shakes his head and throws a glare in Harry’s direction. “Weird way to find out,” he says instead of telling Harry that _of course_ he cares. He probably cares too much, if he’s honest.

“Provided comedic relief,” Harry says with a shrug. He curves toward a pub on the nearest corner. “Now that’s sorted, should we go have a drink?”

“You’re buying anything I order,” Zayn says as he slips under Harry’s arm and into the dark pub. He’s not sure it’s a good thing that all of his dates, and Harry’s dates for that matter, end with them together.

*

“There’s a girl staring at you.”

Zayn looks up from his phone. “What?” Harry isn’t looking at Zayn but just past his shoulder, grinning. “Are you staring back?” He asks with wide eyes.

Harry nods without changing his face. “Oh, here she comes.”

“Harry,” Zayn groans just as the girl shows up at the edge of their booth.

Zayn hadn’t wanted to come out to Haze but Harry called him insisting that they should. “We never go out,” Harry had all but whined into the phone. Zayn reminded him they’d been to happy hour the previous night and he still had a hangover from their Wine Wednesday but he knew what Harry meant - they haven’t properly been out past midnight in months. It’s not even intentional - Zayn has always loved the clubs in Chicago and he knows Harry will as well, but the whole thing sounds exhausting. In all honesty, when Michael slipped the silver band on Zayn’s left hand, he’d assumed his clubbing days were behind him.

At Haze, he’d found Harry without any effort as he was leaning up against the bar in a black shirt unbuttoned down his chest with bright pink trousers hugging his legs. He was talking to the bartender and she seemed to be hanging on every word, wiping her bar towel in a continuous motion over the same square foot of the bar. Harry must have seen Zayn out of the corner of his eye because by the time Zayn was close enough to see his shirt was completely sheer, Harry was turning around with a drink either hand and a grin.

Now they’re three drinks deep, across from each other in a booth on the edge of the writhing dance floor, music swirling and pounding around them.

The girl Harry has beckoned over is wearing a skirt that ends above the edge table and a crop top that puts her belly button ring almost directly in Zayn’s eyeline. She has dirty blonde hair tied up in a bun on top of her head and dark red lips that makes Zayn think of vampires not cherries.

“I saw you looking at me,” she says to Harry. Her hands curl on the edge of the table, black nails with glitter overlay. Zayn hates what having three sisters has done to his nail polish expertise.

“Really?” Harry’s eyes widen imperceptibly, his left dimple curving in as he half smiles. “I saw you staring at him.” He tilts his head toward Zayn and Zayn forces a smirk though he wants to roll his eyes.

The girl matches Harry’s half smile, her gaze dripping over to Zayn, and then back to Harry. “If I’m honest I was staring at both of you.”

“Were you?” Harry grins fully and leans forward slightly. “Did you pick a favorite?”

The girl honest to god giggles and leans toward Harry even more. “It’s hard to pick a favorite when I’ve always been a have it all kind of girl.”

Before Harry can respond, Zayn kicks him under the table but Harry barely flinches. “What’s your name?”

“Leah,” she says, this time to Zayn like he’s the one who asked.

“I’m Zayn, this is Harry,” he says motioning between the two of them. He only does it to be polite but when she leans toward him he takes a drink to get himself to shut up -- Harry is doing enough talking for the both of them.

“Zayn and Harry,” she repeats.

“If you had to pick a favorite, who would it be?” Harry runs his fingers back through his hair and the longer pieces stick up oddly following the trail of his fingers.

“I was thinking I wouldn’t have to pick a favorite,” Leah says. She leans in closer and Zayn swears he can feel the heat off her tanned stomach. “I was thinking you could both be mine.”

This time Zayn chokes and Harry’s eyes go wide, finally catching onto what exactly is being offered to them. He looks at Zayn with shining eyes like he might actually be considering it and Zayn shakes his head.

“One or the other, love,” he says, eyes still on Harry. “Sorry.” He looks at Leah and smiles before draining the rest of his glass, letting the ice click against his teeth as he swallows.

“Aw, babe, she likes us both, though,” Harry says, returning all of Zayn’s under the table kicks with one to his shin. Zayn is about to kick him somewhere much higher than his shin when he glances up and sees that Harry looks like he’s about to burst out laughing. He knows Zayn feels awkward and he’s reveling in it. Sometimes Zayn really hates him.

“We’ll discuss and get back to you,” Zayn says once he’s torn his eyes from Harry.

She looks between both of them, confused about where her upper hand has gone and then backs away with a slow, “Okay,” and another smile hoping to keep them intrigued.

Harry waves after her, eyebrows lifting as he bites his lip.

“You’re such a fucking tease.” Zayn collapses onto the table, his forehead landing in something sticky that makes him sit back up quickly.

Harry full on cackles at him, his eyes closing with the force of his laughter. “I didn’t know,” he says, putting his hands up in innocence. “That took a very unexpected turn for me.”

“For you?” Zayn’s voice goes higher. “You invited her over here and then led her down the threesome path, which, she happily joined you on.”

Harry sighs, the ghost of his laugh still playing on his lips. “If only we could have gotten you on board with us.”

Zayn points at him, “No.” Harry puts his hands up again and bites his lip. Zayn’s pointer finger turns to flipping Harry off seamlessly. “Now, you need to go get me a drink because I had to down that one just to avoid dying of feeling uncomfortable.” Harry doesn’t even fight it, sliding out of the booth and only slightly stumbling over his deer legs.

“Don’t bring anyone back with you,” Zayn calls after him. “Alcohol only.” He pokes a stray ice cube with his straw but swears he can hear Harry laughing over the music.

It only takes a few minutes for Harry to make it back with double whiskey sours but he brings an announcement with him.

“We need to hook up.”

Zayn’s straw goes halfway down his throat. “We’ve been through this already, Harry.”

“Not us,” Harry says gesturing between them, “But like, in general.” He chases his straw around the drink and Zayn waits (almost) patiently for him to finish.

“You’re going to have to be clearer than that,” Zayn says when Harry stops drinking but leaves the straw propped in the corner of his lips. Zayn can’t blame him, his lips are starting to feel numb, his tongue already taking some effort to curve in a way that forms clear words.

“We’re both sad,” Harry says like an explanation. “I know we don’t say we are but we are.” Zayn is tipsy enough to allow him to go on. “And we’re not going to get happy again until we do something about it.”

“Hooking up with someone is your answer?” Zayn clarifies.

“Hooking up, sex, drugs, something,” Harry says emphatically. “Something that can take us out of our misery for a fucking second.” Harry stares at Zayn when he speaks; his words are slow and drawn out but Zayn knows he means them.

Zayn thinks Harry sounds like a surgeon but he doesn’t tell him. “What are you proposing?” He raises his eyebrow and prods his straw in his drink. “I know this isn’t some random idea, you’ve been plotting.” Harry looks away quickly but not before Zayn catches his smile.

“We have to find someone,” he turns back to Zayn. “Here, tonight.”

Zayn groans and drops his head back on his neck. A few hours ago he’d been on the couch reading a new book and now Harry has him drunk in a bar and about to be attempting to pull someone to sleep with him.

“Dating isn’t working, Z.” Harry shrugs his shoulders, “So this is what we need to do.”

Zayn holds his gaze and tries to think of a way out of it but nothing comes. “Okay, fine. What’s your plan?”

“We each go out and try to find someone to bring back with us.”

Zayn blinks at him. “What the fuck kind of plan is that?”

Harry’s eyes go big. “A good one!”

“Do you have a strategy? How do we win?”

“Uh, I’m not giving you my strategy,” Harry says scrunching his nose. “And each time one of us comes back alone, we buy the other a drink. You can only try to pick up one person each time so don’t go running around throwing yourself at everyone.”

Zayn closes his eyes for a beat and takes a deep breath. “Alright.”

Harry clasps his hands together in excitement, his eyes almost sparkling. “Great. Now, age before beauty so you go first.” He ducks after he says it, laughing and squealing when Zayn leans across the table before smacking his head and going out into the bar alone, a full drink in his hand. He’s pretty sure the best way for either of them to get anywhere would be to wingman for each other, not go out on a solo mission but somehow he’s always been the one to jump right into Harry’s reindeer games.

Zayn doesn’t even make it to the end of the bar on his side when a guy pulls him in, a gentle tug on his arm. It sloshes Zayn’s drink over his hand but when he goes to tell the guy off, his words get stuck in the bottom of is throat. He has wide blue eyes and hair as dark as Zayn’s, stubble on his face and perfectly white teeth. Zayn can’t place his cologne but he can smell it even in the crowd and it makes him take a step closer.

“How’s your night going?” The guy asks with a smile, shifting back from the bar to make room for Zayn.

“Good,” Zayn says, “You?”

“Getting better,” he says with another smile. The bartender comes up behind him with a beer she slides toward him.

“Anything else?”

He glances at Zayn, “Can I buy you a drink?”

Zayn lifts his own glass. “Just got one.” He cringes as the guy turns back to tell the bartender his order. When he was twenty-two he would have just taken a second drink and downed the first. Hell, when he was eighteen he would have just dropped the glass he was holding at the chance for another guy to buy him a drink. Maybe growing up is being a bit more honest at the risk of not impressing someone else.

“What’s your name?”

“Zayn,” he says, “Yours?”

“Luke.”

Zayn smiles and tries to scan his brain for a new question to ask, anything really. He comes up blank and hates it. It’s been so long since he’s purposefully tried to get someone to go home with him for just one night. He used to find it easy to pick someone up in a bar, leaning in and laughing against their shoulder, whispering in their ear, making a smart ass comment that was vaguely insulting.

As it is, Luke’s smile slips from his face in the silence and he looks somewhere over Zayn’s shoulder. “I think I see someone I’m supposed to meet.”

Zayn doesn’t follow his gaze because he doesn’t want to see that there’s no one there. He just nods and says it was nice to meet him before leaning over the bar and ordering Harry a whiskey soda.

“Worst game ever invented,” he announces back at the table and Harry laughs.

“He was cute,” he says, pointing his chin in the direction where Luke has disappeared.

“And he thought I was about as interesting as a piece of cardboard,” Zayn says. He slides Harry’s drink across the table. “I don’t blame him for ditching.”

Harry studies him for a moment, bottom lip stuck under his teeth before he nods and starts out of the booth on his own. “On that note, wish me luck.”

Zayn sips his drink as he watches Harry prowl around the edge of the bar. He’s not hard to miss in his bright pink trousers and evidently other people agree as their eyes catch and stay on him just like Zayn’s. It’s been like this since they were kids, whether Harry wears electric colored pants or looks like a hungover fish – People notice him and can’t seem to look away. His infectious magnetism draws people to him even if he doesn’t seem able to hang on to them, or hangs onto the wrong ones altogether.

He sees when Harry must catch his mark because he runs a hand back through his hair, wipes his mouth with the back of his hand, and straightens his shoulders as he approaches. The guy he’s looking at is tall with sandy brown hair; he’s well-dressed in a black button down shirt, leaning back on the bar with one elbow. When he sees Harry, he opens his body to him and Zayn groans quietly. He knows he’s sunk. Sometimes it takes him an hour to get comfortable enough to have a decent conversation with someone but Harry melts into people like warm chocolate.

He’s rather surprised then when he sees Harry coming back to him, the tops of his cheeks pink and his hair significantly more ruffled than when he left.  He puts a dark drink in front of Zayn and takes his own spot again; pulling the last drink Zayn had bought him closer.

“How was it?” Zayn asks as Harry takes an unending drink from his straw.

“Well, he was pretty into BDSM,” he says once he swallows.

Zayn tweaks his neck as he turns around and tries to spot the guy again. He’s still at the bar, standing in the same position and talking with a woman in a polka dot dress. Zayn doesn’t know if he expects him to be holding a whip or something but he comes up disappointed. “How the hell did that come up?”

Harry licks his bottom lip and tilts his head. “Well, let’s see, I said, ‘Hi, I’m Harry’, and he says, ‘Are you a dom or a sub?’”

Zayn laughs so hard he snorts while he tries to catch his breath. Harry’s lips twitch and he drinks some of his mixed drink while he waits. “What did you say?”

“What do you think I said?” Harry says loudly, his voice going higher. “I said, ‘You have a nice night now’.”

Zayn laughs again, a bubble of a laugh that comes out even when he tries to stop it. “You didn’t feel like exploring your boundaries?”

“Nah,” Harry says, “It would take me too long to come up with a safe word. We wouldn’t get to the good stuff.”

“I see how that could be a problem.” Zayn smirks and then starts laughing again until Harry pinches his arm to make him stop.

“You go again,” Harry says. “And if you come back alone, buy me a beer not another whiskey.”

Zayn pauses with one foot out of the booth, “Are you supposed to be picking your drinks?”

“If you want me to be able to walk out of this place, then yeah, I get to pick my drinks.”

Zayn heads for the opposite direction he’d tried the first time, carefully avoiding groups and trying to find someone on their own. There’s a girl at the bar that his eyes fall easily to. She’s leaning with her front to the rest of the crowd and catches his eye as he walks toward her, smiling slightly when she realizes his intent. “I’m not interested,” she says. Her voice is low enough to carry over the crowd noise.

“Interested in what?” He raises his eyebrow and smirks.

“You.” She says with a tilt of her head, “You trying to flirt with me because I’m standing by myself.”

Zayn actually laughs as he comes to stand next to her. He keeps his back to everyone else, one hip hitching against the bar. “Am I that obvious?”

She purses her lips. “Not exactly. But I do know your type so it’s mostly a guess.”

“And if I just want to order a drink at this spot at the bar because there’s an opening?”

She moves an inch further from him. “Be my guest.”

“I’m Zayn by the way,” he says.

“I didn’t ask,” she says but she smirks again.

“Figured it would be nice to exchange pleasantries if I’m going to stand here for a bit.” He gestures toward the bartenders, “Everyone seems busy at the moment.”

“I’m Sarah,” she says as she swallows another sip of her drink. “And I don’t really do small talk so please don’t do that next.”

Zayn laughs. He feels immensely more comfortable than he did his first shot at Luke and this girl isn’t even interested in him. “Okay, I won’t. What do you think the meaning of life is?” He scrunches his nose, “Is that a broad and important enough topic for you?”

Her lips twitch and she shakes her head, “You’re not funny.”

He nods, “You’re keeping me humble, and I can appreciate that.” She laughs and it sounds like warm smoke.

“What can I get you?” A bartender with a thick French braid running down her back taps the bar next to Zayn. He orders a beer knowing he’ll have to give it to Harry and turns back to Sarah. Her gaze is somewhere over his shoulder and it’s unsettlingly familiar. He swallows self-consciously and twists a skull ring on his hand.

“Your boyfriend is staring at us,” she says.

Zayn starts to nod like she’s giving an excuse to get away from him before he realizes what she’s actually saying. “Sorry, what?”

“Your boyfriend.” She raises her chin to the same place her eyes had been earlier. His eyebrows pull together as he follows his gaze and sees exactly what she’s looking at. Harry has his head propped in his hands, elbows on the table, staring right at the two of them with a full grin on his face. He gives Zayn a thumbs up when he spots him looking.

“He’s definitely not my boyfriend,” he says. He widens his eyes at Harry to try and make him look away but Harry laughs and stays staring at them. Zayn sighs as he turns his back to him.

“Are you sure?” She pauses as Zayn gives cash to the bartender and takes the beer. “He’s been staring at you since you started walking over to me.”

“He’s my best friend,” he says. “An annoying one at that.”

She laughs and bites her lip, “If I wasn’t here waiting for my fiancé to meet me; I’d think you were quite the catch, Zayn.” Zayn’s not sure he deserves the compliment now that he notices the diamond on her left hand but he smiles anyway.

“Did you get yourself a date?” Harry yells as Zayn comes back to the booth with the beer in hand. “No?” He smirks as Zayn sets it in front of him.  

“No.” Zayn shakes his head as he slips back into the booth. “Mostly because she thought I was dating you.” He doesn’t need Harry ruining his chances before they even get going - even if those chances never existed. Whatever. Not the point. He gulps some of the vodka soda in front of him and coughs at how lacking in mixer the drink is.

Harry’s smile spread slowly, sloppily almost. “Did she say we were a cute couple at least?”

“Fuck off,” Zayn says as he watches Harry get back out of the booth again. He heads right for a blonde in a tiny red dress leaning against the bar and Zayn can’t help but laugh. He’s clearly had his eye on her. It would seem she’s had an eye on Harry as well because as soon as he’s anywhere close enough, she’s draped on him, both arms around his shoulders, her face dangerously close to his. If there was a slight shift in the bodies around them, they’d be kissing.

Zayn sighs and goes back to his drink. There’s no way Harry’s coming back alone now.

“It’s a no.”

Zayn is fully shocked when Harry collapses back into their both. “What do you mean it’s a no?”

“She thought I wanted to get off in the bathroom,” he whines as he pushes a drink at Zayn.

“How did that happen?” Zayn leans forward on his elbows, eyes sparkling. He loves that Harry is just as bad at this as he is. “What could you have possibly said?”

Harry flutters his hands around with wide eyes. “I don’t know! I actually don’t know how it happened except she was holding my hand and we were headed for the bathrooms and I didn’t even know her name.”

“I thought you wanted to hook up with someone?” Zayn smirks.

“Not in the bar bathroom,” Harry says, throwing his hands up. “I’m not nineteen anymore, you know.”

“You don’t look a day over twenty,” Zayn says with a smile. “That baby face isn’t going anywhere fast.” Harry rolls his eyes at him and licks the foam from his beer. “Do I have to go again?”

They both look out over the bar at the same time – finding the earlier crowd dwindling down to almost nothing.  “Think we might be out of time,” Harry says right as the bartender sweeps by with a call for final orders.

Zayn pokes at his drink with his straw. “Do you think there’s a world record for most failed attempts at dating?”

“I’m sure we’ve broken it,” Harry says before downing the rest of his beer in one steady gulp. Zayn tries to finish his drink but gives up halfway and can’t even get Harry to finish it for him.  

“Let’s get pretzels,” Harry says once they’re outside of Haze, the night warm around them. Zayn takes one look at the line of people waiting for cabs and agrees, starting off down the street where the food carts always park.

Harry lags a step behind him, his boots making a dragging sound on the pavement. “Pick your feet up,” Zayn tells him over his shoulder. “Keep up.”

“Yes, mum,” Harry mutters as he finally catches up to Zayn. “What a fucking terrible night. No offense, babe.”

Zayn laughs, “None taken. I’ll buy you a soft pretzel to make it all better.” He pushes Harry toward the curb while he waits in line at the pretzel stand. He finds himself laughing as he watches Harry navigate how to fold his legs under himself, nearly falling on his back as he tries to sit. He manages it around the time Zayn pays for two soft pretzels without salt but with plastic cups of nacho cheese on the side.

“See, it is hard,” Harry comments as Zayn tries to sit down and sloshes cheese over his hand.

“Because I’m balancing all this shit,” Zayn huffs. Harry takes his pretzel and cheese with a satisfied smile.

They eat in silence for a while, watching drunk people take to the streets and a couple of girls drop tacos on the ground before picking them up and eating them anyway. Zayn gags and Harry applauds with half the pretzel still hanging out of his mouth.

“Will it be easier to sleep tonight?” Zayn asks. “Now that you’re drunk.”

Harry swings his head toward Zayn slowly, chewing the pretzel with his whole jaw like a cow. “I’m not drunk.”

“Swallow before you speak,” Zayn says, closing his eyes. Harry opens his mouth to present the half chewed food in its cheesy glory.

“No,” he says once he swallows like the adult he’s supposed to be. “I thought it would. I walked myself down a bad road at first, trying to get drunk to sleep. It doesn’t work though."

“If I had a secret to tell you to make you fall asleep, I’d tell you.”

“I appreciate the effort. Hate to say I’ve probably tried everything and it hasn’t worked.” Harry laughs at something Zayn doesn’t see and shakes his head. “I’m getting better, though. I think I’ve got like six hours under my belt now.

“Six hours?” Zayn laughs, “That’s more than I get after taking a Melatonin, babe.”

“Guess it’s just us again,” Harry says as they finish up, the street going quieter around them. They both stand and start walking in the general direction of their apartments, hips bumping and hands brushing every once in a while.

“This is becoming a startlingly frequent occurrence,” Zayn says. He feels tipsy - not enough to want to go to another bar, though most of those are probably closed, tipsy enough that he can’t look away from Harry, though, glancing over at him every couple of steps. He shoves his hands in his pockets to keep from grabbing Harry’s hand in his. There’s something about the way his lips are as dark as his suit and his hair is a complete mess from his fingers being in it all night.

“What?” Harry says when he catches Zayn staring at him. His lips pull into a half smirk. It’s the same as when they were just kids, when Zayn was helpless to that smile. Helpless to Harry.

“Nothing,” Zayn says, drawing the word out slowly. “You’re just pretty is all.”

“Thanks.” Harry’s smirk turns to a grin and it still looks like sunshine on him, still looks bright enough to touch. And maybe Zayn is a bit tipsier than he thought. There’s a steady pulsing in Zayn’s chest he recognizes like a ghost from nearly a decade ago, one he taught himself to ignore until it went away.

They get to Harry’s apartment first and they stop in front of the lobby. Harry says something about going to lunch tomorrow and Zayn agrees but his mind isn’t there. He’s focused on a hazy wine-drunk memory from weeks ago when Harry made a proposal he didn’t want to take, but that sounds like a dream right now. He stares unabashedly at Harry’s thighs in the pink pants and licks his lips, want curling low in his stomach and rising up to meet him head on. He thinks Harry notices, if the way he takes a step back and clears his throat is any indication.

“I’m going to go up now,” he says quietly, stepping back again.

“Wait.” He doesn’t want to ignore the curling feeling in his gut. Just for one night.

“What?” Harry turns back and seems surprised at how close Zayn has gotten to him. His pupils are blown and his lip is stuck between his teeth, his lungs skip a breath and Zayn’s close enough to hear it.

There’s a thin line between them and Zayn knows he can cross it, hopes it’s okay to cross it once and jump back over. Too drunk to weigh the possibility that it may not be. “Remember what you said?”

Harry swallows hard. “When?”

“You said we should hook up,” Zayn says. “You said we could because we’re best friends.” The words are coming out wrong and Zayn shakes his head. That isn’t what he wanted to say. He wants to say what Harry said before – about trust and only having sex without attachment and how good it would be.

“Did I? I don’t know about that.” Harry half smiles, his voice light and joking.

“You did,” Zayn says. “You said we trust each other so we should.”

Harry’s eyes go wide and he takes a step back, suddenly looking more cornered than Zayn thought he would. He thought the offer still stood, he thought Harry would want him too. “We can’t,” he says.

“Why?” Zayn doesn’t mean to be petulant - he really does want to know.  He’s starting to get a headache from drinking already and the pretzel isn’t settling well in his stomach.

“You’re my best friend and that’s all,” Harry says, shaking his head. “That’s why we can’t.”

Zayn pauses, “That’s my line.”

Harry stares at him and he looks more sober than Zayn feels. His lips twitch like he’s going to say something Zayn needs to hear. Zayn wants to hear him, wants to kiss him, wants to lick him, wants to touch every inch of him but his head is swimming, his stomach turning. He’s drunker than he thought, he thinks.

“That’s my line,” he says again in case Harry didn’t hear him.

He’s not sure if he hears it right, if it’s just a dream of a sentence when Harry says, “I think it just became mine.” He’s not sure because as soon as it comes out, he promptly throws up on the pavement, his own shoes and Harry’s pink trousers.

*

Zayn wakes up to Harry’s snores again. He’s gotten used to waking up next to Harry like this, when he’s too tired or too drunk or too lazy to walk home. But his head is pounding this time and his mouth is dry, he’s wearing jeans, no shirt and only one sock.

For a moment, he’s scared to move – terrified his stomach is going to turn inside out. But then the memories of the night before come back and he hurls himself onto his stomach, pressing his face into his pillow with the vaguest hope he might actually lose consciousness. It doesn’t work and he has to lift his face up to take a deep breath.

It’s like a terrible movie when he thinks about it – the scene outside Harry’s apartment, him throwing himself at his best friend and then throwing up. He doesn’t even know what happened after that – if Harry offered for him to come upstairs or if he begged to be invited. He rubs his forehead wishing he could remember and cursing every last vodka soda from Haze and the soft pretzel from a street corner that he doesn’t.

Harry takes another snuffled breath and Zayn startles a little. Harry takes up more than half of the bed lying on his back with his hands and legs spread out to the sides. He hopes the fact that Harry is sleeping next to him means he doesn’t hate him. Harry sighs in his sleep but stays unmoving so Zayn is careful not to bother him as he crawls out of bed, his head absolutely throbbing. He doesn’t even let his eyes trace over Harry’s ink and lithe muscles the way he usually does, he just tries to get out of the room quickly. Paul is sitting in the hallway and catches in step behind Zayn easily. At least he doesn’t judge him.

Zayn props himself up at the sink and drinks three glasses of water all while swearing off alcohol for the rest of his life. There’s a part of him, stronger than he wants to admit, that wants to leave before Harry gets up. To call him later and act like everything is okay and he didn’t just attempt to get Harry to sleep with him. Just the thought makes him groan and press his hands to his eyes.

He can’t leave and he knows it. Harry deserves more than a friend who pukes on him and then runs away the next morning, Zayn wants to give him more than that. He wants to make it up to him.

He makes himself at home in Harry’s kitchen, lighting a candle on the counter and pulling out eggs from the fridge, a loaf of bread and the toaster. Paul circles his ankles until Zayn pours him a bowl of food though it’s probably too much considering the cat is about as big as a deflated soccer ball. The morning sun filters through the windows and onto the floor, and once Paul eats he curls up in one of the warming squares. Zayn has to frequently pause to drink water or cover his mouth when he thinks he’s going to puke but an hour into making pancakes and starting to work on a scramble, he starts to feel a bit better about his life.

“Are you cooking?”

Zayn spins around to see Harry at the edge of the kitchen in a pair of threadbare sweatpants and nothing else, his hair sticking out in all possible directions. “I wanted to let you sleep,” Zayn says. Harry absently scratches his stomach and smiles, his eyes still bleary from waking up.

“That’s nice of you.”

Zayn turns the heat lower on the stove and faces Harry. “And I wanted to say I’m sorry.”

Harry tilts his head, eyebrows twitching. “For?”

“Last night. All of it,” Zayn says with a wave of his hand. “Or the second half, I guess.”

Harry huffs out a laugh and rubs at his eyes. “You were drunk.”

Zayn smiles, “Yeah, I was.”

Neither one of them offers anything more and somehow that’s that – Zayn ignores the sinking feeling in his stomach and pretends he doesn’t see Harry’s smile transform into more of a frown as he starts the kettle for tea.

*

They don’t talk about what happened in front of Harry’s apartment. Zayn pays the dry cleaning bill for Harry’s trousers at his own insistence and then they don’t bring it up. The first few times Zayn sees Harry after – he thinks he might be about to mention it but nothing ever comes of it. It’s not awkward, it’s just nothing. Life somehow goes on without mention of the night Zayn offered everything to Harry and got turned away.

Summer winds down but August is still too warm and they find themselves inside too often, either at work or avoiding the heat. Zayn takes Harry to a couple of the art galleries he hasn’t been to yet and Harry makes them a picnic they eat down by the river one night after work. They go on dates that are still terrible - and it becomes a weekly ritual to talk about how each date goes wrong and lament their ability to pick people who they might actually have a chance with. They definitely don’t talk about the prospect of being friends with benefits again.

*

September curls in with less smothering heat and the vibrations of new beginnings the way it always seems to follow after summer. Louis and Eleanor announce they’ve bought a house together just outside of the city limits in New York which only leaves Harry and Zayn to speculate how much longer it will be until an engagement follows.

“It can’t be more than three months,” Harry says as he picks up a decorative clay vase. He looks at the price and puts it back down. They’ve come to the Pottery Barn to pick out housewarming gifts but everything seems to be dangling just outside their budgets.

“Do you think they’re engaged and not telling anyone?” Zayn runs his hand over one of the sample beds. He’s always wondered if they’re actually comfortable to lie on or if the mattress is shit but something tells him Pottery Barn isn’t the place to find out.

“No way,” Harry says as he wanders toward the display of decorative pillows. “Louis can’t keep a secret worth shit.”

“As if you can,” Zayn muses, following after Harry. He finds it funny to watch Harry shop, the way he has to touch everything and barely puts things back the way he found them before heading off to something new that catches his eye.

“Hey,” Harry says without any heat, “I am an excellent secret keeper.”

Zayn snorts, “Because you like to have information that no one else has not because you have any sense of loyalty.”

Harry hums and doesn’t deny it. “You know me too well.” He takes two striped pillows from the shelf in front of them and tucks them under his arms. “I think I’ve found my gift.”

Zayn runs his hand over the slowly developing beard on his jaw – he really needs to shave. “Congratulations but I haven’t.”

“Can you hurry and pick something? I want to go to lunch.”

“Just for that I’m going to keep you trapped in home goods jail a bit longer,” Zayn laughs and turns on his heel. He thought there were some candles near the front of the store that would be good.

His plan to keep Harry bored goes astray as soon as they approach the display as Harry sets down his pillows and starts pulling the lids off of the candles to smell each one. He starts to make a line of the ones he plans to buy next to his pillows before Zayn even tries the one called ‘Lovely Lavender’. He finds it doesn’t smell lovely at all and he coughs as he replaces it on the shelf.  He’s reaching for a vanilla one that Harry has already set aside two of – when he hears a voice that makes his heart stutter.

With the candle still in his hand he turns toward the sound, half-hoping he’s mistaken. That hope deflates like a balloon in his chest. Across the front of the store, in a display bedroom with nautical accents are the two people he last saw naked on his couch six months ago.

“What about this one, baby?” Michael holds up one of the packaged duvet covers as Krista comes closer to look at it.

Zayn’s heart takes up a double time pace, familiar heat flooding his cheeks, sound turning into staccato echoes around him. He knows Michael lives in Chicago, he knows a big city is never as big as it seems, he knows he was destined to see him again. He’d just hoped it would be after he’s become rich and famous for a yet identified talent when he could look him in the eye and say that he’s better for having been cheated on and duped by the man he loved. That he’s stronger and more confident than before because of that. And standing there, in this moment, he doesn’t feel that way at all.

He feels like he’s shrinking and slipping at the same time, like every memory is flooding back to him and imprinting on his mind, scarring and ripping at the seams of emotion he’s been trying so hard to erase and retract.

“Fucking hell, that doesn’t smell like apricot.”

It’s nothing at all, Harry’s candle commentary, but Zayn feels his heart slow as he turns back again and laughs at him. Harry looks over with furrowed brows before setting the candle back on the shelf and reaching for another.

“I thought I said that quietly,” he says as a smile tugs on the edges of his lips.

Zayn shakes his head and takes the lid off the vanilla candle he’s holding. He lifts the edge of the jar to his nose but the smell doesn’t register. He’s unfrozen from staring at Michael and Krista but now his mind is racing at what he’s supposed to do. If he should say, ‘Hello,’ or storm out of the store, if he should pretend he hasn’t seen them. The flood of thoughts must show on his face because Harry is looking at him oddly, his eyes slightly narrowed.

“Everything okay?” He asks.

“Yeah, why?” Zayn speaks too quickly and he knows it. His defensive nature has always backed him into obvious corners.

“You’re holding that candle to your face like a fucking inhaler is all,” Harry says with a shrug and it makes Zayn laugh again as he lowers it slightly. Without another thought he spits out the weight on his shoulders, hopes Harry can hold it for him instead. “Michael is over there with the neighbor.”

Out loud it sounds menial and laughable but he doesn’t have to say it twice for Harry to get it. His eyes go wide and his grip tightens on the candle in his hands as he looks surreptitiously over his shoulder. He snaps his head back just as quickly and takes a deep breath.

“Okay,” he says almost to himself and then again louder. “Okay. I have a plan. I’ll just go pay for all of this stuff.” He picks up his pillows and the candles stacking them precariously up on each other and plucking the one Zayn is holding onto as well. “And you just wait outside and then I’ll come meet you and we’ll get lunch. It’ll be fine.” He exhales through his lips in a steady stream like he’s worked himself into frenzy on Zayn’s behalf. “It’ll be fine,” he repeats. “Okay?”

Zayn’s mouth opens and closes as he tries to make a stampede of words turn into just one sentence. “You have a plan,” he repeats. “You have a plan for me running into my ex-fiancé and the woman he cheated on me with.”

Harry throws another glance over his shoulder, his feet moving in place like he’s antsy. “Hardly,” he says. “More of a plan to get you out of the Pottery Barn is all. But maybe we can discuss the specifics of it later?”

Zayn’s heart kind of melts at the edges and he’s pressed with the hard to avoid desire to just kiss Harry in appreciation right there in the middle of the Pottery Barn as he balances four candles and two throw pillows with wide eyes and flushed cheeks like he’s in the midst of completing a mission overseas. He knew without Zayn asking – he knew what it must feel like to be in Zayn’s position and he jumped without hearing the word go to figure out how to make it better.

Zayn inhales steadily through his nose and smiles at Harry. He knows what he needs to do and it’s not run away despite every desire pulsing through his very blood to do just that. “It’s okay,” he says and realizes it’s true. “I’m okay.”

Harry tilts his head slightly, “You’re okay?”

“I- yeah,” Zayn nods and licks his bottom lip. “I think if I was alone I would have burst through the front windows and ran down the street,” he says and then nods again. “But I’m not. You’re here.”

He watches the way Harry’s eyes flicker at that, his eyelashes shaking almost. Then he smiles, “Yeah, I’m here.”

Zayn nods, the third time in barely as many minutes, “Here, let me take some of these candles back from you.” He takes the jars from Harry’s arms and puts them in his own. “Can you grab one more of the vanilla ones? I think that’s my gift.”

Harry is watching him carefully, a small smile on his lips. “Yeah, I can.” He takes it from the shelf and holds onto it himself so Zayn isn’t overrun with candles. “That’s my favorite, by the way.”

“Not the apricot?” Zayn asks, realizing his smile matches Harry’s.

They start walking away from the candle display before Harry can answer and right into the aisle where Michael is standing with Krista. The shock of seeing them a second time doesn’t hit Zayn as hard as it clearly hits Michael. His face turns red and the duvet cover in his hands slips a bit. Krista is holding a matching blanket and Zayn thinks they might be moving in together. They might be picking out things for their new place, coordinating their bedroom the way Zayn and Michael once did. The realization is sour but not nearly as hard to swallow as he thought it would be.

“Zayn.” Michael’s voice curls around his name the way it used to but it doesn’t sound as sweet as it once did.

Zayn lifts his chin and notices Harry shifting next to him, his eyes laser focused on the side of Zayn’s face. He might be waiting for Zayn to collapse on the ground and start crying, to admit he’s not as okay he said. “Michael,” he says politely, “Krista.” He flashes a quick smile. “I believe you remember, Harry?” He tilts his head toward Harry and almost laughs at Harry’s cool turn of his head toward Michael, his gaze revealing nothing but coldness.

“I do,” Michael says. His eyes shift between them and he clears his throat.

Zayn feels utterly calm as he smiles, holds out in silence longer than he should. “Well, hope everything’s going well,” he says finally. “Great to see you both fully clothed again.” He walks away as soon as he says it, scared he’ll lose his nerve if he lingers. He’s pleasantly happy to hear Harry’s boots right behind him, clicking softly on the hardwood floors of the store.

“I am so impressed you have no idea,” Harry murmurs as they pass back through the room of decorative pillows and further away from Michael and Krista.

Zayn’s laugh comes out in a huff of broken air. His palms are sweating and his heart is trying to figure out how to race out of his chest. He tells Harry as much as they get closer to the cashier. “And I’m really going to need a drink at lunch now,” he says.

“On me,” Harry says easily taking his share of candles from Zayn’s arm. “This is a cause for celebration, babe.”

Zayn didn’t ever imagine a pivotal moment of his life happening in Pottery Barn but somehow the thing he least expects don’t see as surprising anymore. It was a revelation, he explains to Harry over lunch once he’s processed it. His gut reaction was to run away but he stayed and once he looked Michael in the eye, the scariest demons quieted themselves.

“I think I’m getting over it,” he says to Harry over a club sandwich. “I don’t think I’ll ever forgive him and we won’t be anything close to friends ever again but I don’t care about him.” He stares right into Harry’s eyes and actually smiles. “And I didn’t think I would ever really get here.”

Harry sets his own sandwich down and lifts his beer instead. “Cheers,” he says as he clicks his glass against Zayn’s. “To finesse in the face of cheating assholes.” Zayn laughs before he can take a sip, feeling the weight on his shoulders, on his heart, slowly slip away.

*

For all the quieted demons – dating still doesn’t seem to be getting much better. Zayn and Harry download Tinder on the same night and then get drunk on wine while they sit side by side and swipe through it. Zayn can’t even remember who he’s seen on his phone or Harry’s phone by the end of it since they keep having conferences before either of them makes a decision on what way to swipe. Zayn does end up taking one guy out who messages him the next morning which isn’t nearly as good as Harry’s three dates off of one night on the app.

They do a better job of being each other’s wingman the next time they go to Haze but Zayn has a sneaking suspicion it’s because neither one of them gets that drunk. The lingering effects of the last night they were in the same club seem to weigh heavy and they leave together at the end of the night though Zayn has one phone number scrolled up his forearm.

“You should get it tattooed,” Harry says when they’re at a late night Mexican diner a few blocks away. He’s pushed Zayn’s sleeve up and run his fingers along the curves of the digits. “It looks kind of sick with the other ones.”

Zayn studies the numbers and scrunches his nose. “H, I don’t even know her name.”

Harry drops his arm and goes back to the quesadilla he ordered. “That’s a bit mysterious,” he says with a lift of his eyebrows. He laughs when Zayn stares at him. “Alright, fuck off and don’t get the tattoo. You never take my advice anyway.”

Dating seems like a monotonous motion of rejection and awkward encounters and Zayn is about to give it up by the end of September. He hates the back and forth that ends in nothing, he hates getting his hopes up and then being let down. He hates every piece of it except when he and Harry debrief the next day and make each other laugh about whatever debacle they’ve gotten into. He’s about to swear it off entirely; live a solitary life on his own when he meets Zara. And then, everything changes.

He meets Zara on a Thursday morning when he goes to get coffee before work. It’s a rare morning when he’s not with Harry so he’s caught off guard when someone approaches him right as he’s reaching for his drink at the end of the counter.

“Excuse me.”

He looks up at the voice only to be met with stunningly dark blue eyes and curly dark hair standing right next to him. “Yeah?” He responds as if eloquence is a thing of the past.

“This may be terribly awkward.” Her voice is raspy and her smile is bright when she says, “But are you Zayn?”

Zayn blinks and tries to place her, tries to remember how she would know him. “I am,” he says slowly.

“I think I have your drink,” she says. “I’m Zara and I think they got confused.” She gestures to the drink in Zayn’s hand and he looks at the scrawled name across the back. It doesn’t look like anything but a ‘Z’ followed by a bunch of scribbling but when she turns her cup around he can see the distinct _Zayn_ written out instead.

“So you do,” he says, matching her smile. They laugh as they switch cups. “What did you order?” Zayn asks, “Maybe I would have liked yours more.”

“Chai latte,” she says and he grimaces unintentionally. It makes her laugh. “It’s an acquired taste, I think. What did you order?”

“Black coffee,” he says with a scrunched nose. “Not that exciting.”

“It does the trick, though.” They walk toward the exit of the coffee shop. “I always find when I drink coffee black I get a lot more done. With a latte I just kind of sip and pretend my life is far more glamourous than it is.”

Zayn holds the door for her and laughs, it only takes a moment for him to realize it’s because it sounds like something Harry would say. “What way are you headed?”

She nudges her head in the opposite direction of Zayn’s office. “That way.”

He nods, “I’m the complete other way.” There’s a pause, a beat where they can both leave quietly but they don’t. Instead, Zayn takes a step closer. “Is there any way I can get your number so we can continue talking about coffee over dinner?” It’s cheesy and terrible and definitely something Harry would say but Zara just smiles, her eyes turning somehow warmer as she agrees.

They go out to dinner the following weekend and then another two dates after that within the next week. It’s quicker than Zayn would expect but it’s easy. Zara is wickedly funny and kind of brilliant – an accountant of all things. She was born and raised in a city just outside of Chicago but she talks about traveling the world in between university and getting her accounting certificate and Zayn finds himself mesmerized. Conversation is never forced and when it’s quiet it doesn’t feel like an abyss but only a momentary lapse in ideas.

“Who’s Harry?” She asks on their fourth date. Zayn has taken her to a taco place Harry recommended – a little dingy hole in the wall that somehow makes amazing food.

“Harry?” He tilts his head, “My Harry?”

She laughs and reaches for her margarita. “Yes, your Harry. You always talk about him.”

Zayn pauses with a taco halfway to his mouth. He tries to remember the last time he mentioned Harry to Zara and it must have been when he invited her to meet him at Migos because Harry was the one who told him about it. He lifts the taco further and pauses again. It was definitely after that – he’d told her about how Harry ended up with someone’s underwear in his suit jacket when they went out over the weekend and neither one of them could figure out how it got there. “I don’t always talk about him,” he says, slowly and surely realizing that he doesn’t think that is true. At the risk of sounding defensive, he adds, “He’s my best friend. We grew up together and then both ended up in Chicago.”

“I’d like to meet him,” she says with a small smile.

“Yeah,” Zayn says even if it sounds like an echo to him. He can’t imagine introducing Zara to Harry, how it would go. He knows Harry would be perfectly charming the way he always is and Zara would be the same both of them charming each other in the process. What he can’t imagine is crossing the two of them together – in his mind they are separate. Harry is his best friend and confidant, the person who always makes him laugh and is up for anything especially if it involves wine. Harry has seen the best parts and worst parts of him and holds onto each of those pieces with careful hands. And Zara – Zara is the girl he’s dating.

Sitting there, it hits him – the unfairness in his logic. Harry is the most important person in his life – the one he should want to introduce a girlfriend too first. But for some reason, he can’t. Harry feels like a secret he doesn’t want to have to share.

“I think I want to go to the North Pole next year,” Zara says, setting her margarita back on the table. She moves on from Harry easy as anything and that’s what Zayn finds so lovely about her – how easy she is to be with. “I’ve always wanted to visit the penguins.”

“Really?” Zayn smiles and adjusts in his chair. “What brought that on?” He hates to admit he doesn’t listen to the answer – his mind lingering over her question about Harry and his own hesitance.

“How’s it all going?” Harry asks the following morning when Zayn meets him for their usual coffee date. “That was the fourth date with the same person?”

“Zara,” Zayn says as he realizes he never told Harry her name.

“Zara,” Harry repeats. “Zara and Zayn, that’s kind of cute.” He smiles and something about it is off.

“It is,” Zayn says, matching his same distorted smile. There’s something unspoken between them and Zayn doesn’t know what it is. “I like her,” he says to make up for it.

“Good,” Harry says with a nod. “That’s really good.” Zayn can’t shake the feeling he’s trying to convince himself.

It’s different after that and Zayn can’t place a finger on just what it is. He doesn’t talk to Harry about Zara anymore and he tries not to mention Harry to Zara anymore either. He keeps them separate like two opposite sides of a coin and hopes neither of them really notices.

He does like Zara and he’s comfortable with her – as comfortable as the moment he met her. She doesn’t need him and he thinks that’s what he admires most in her. He’s a passing thought in her day – not someone she has to constantly be in contact with or needs to see every day or even every other day. Zayn scares himself one day by wondering if he likes that she doesn’t need him all the time or if he likes that he can be dating someone and still spend the majority of his time with Harry – drinking wine and watching romantic comedies, exploring the city and talking about absolutely nothing on his balcony. He’s too scared to admit the answer.

*

The first night he sleeps over at Zara’s apartment – he doesn’t actually sleep at all. They’ve been hesitant with the physical side of things for reasons neither one of them spells out. He finally offered to make dinner at her place and once they’re tipsy off of white wine they fall into bed together, hands, mouths, lips, and teeth without ever making it all the way to having sex. It’s good in all the ways it should be – Zayn exploring her body and letting her do the same, tasting her on his tongue and memorizing the soft sounds she makes in his ear. His body likes her, likes that it’s being touched by someone other than himself after far too long.

None of that explains why he’s lying awake in her bed afterwards, while she sleeps perfectly soundly next to him, her wild black curls spread against the white pillowcase, her face utterly serene with dreams he’ll never know. He tries to count sheep and rolls his eyes at himself, flips onto his stomach and then his side before getting out of bed to walk around her apartment.

It’s complete happenstance that he even sees his phone vibrating on the kitchen counter a few minutes later. If he was asleep like a normal person is supposed to be, he would have missed the call. As it is, he answers without a moment’s thought, finger sliding across the picture of Paul. His eyes hit the two-thirty a.m. reading on the clock above the stove at the same time he says, “Hello?”

At first, it’s quiet; nothing but heavy breathing across the line and scattered sounds he can’t place. Zayn pulls the phone away from his ear wondering if Harry hasn’t meant to call. “Harry?” He tries again.

“Zayn?” His name comes out broken in two syllables and suddenly Zayn is completely on edge, the phone pressed tightly to his ear.

“Harry? What’s going on?” There’s a soft sound and it sounds like a gasp and Zayn presses the phone even tighter as though it will help him hear. “Harry?” He can hear the own panic in his voice.

“It’s Paul,” Harry says and that’s when Zayn can hear the emotion in his voice the most - when he says those two words.

“Where are you?” Zayn asks, already walking back to Zara’s room.

“The emergency vet,” Harry says. “He was choking and I didn’t know what to do and now they’ve taken him away and won’t say what’s wrong. And I-,” he pauses and then sniffs again, “I don’t know what to do.”

“Text me the address,” Zayn whispers with his jeans pulled halfway up his legs. “I’m coming.”

He gets dressed quietly and quickly, pulling the covers up over Zara just before he leaves, hoping it acts as an apology for when she wakes up alone. He knows it wont. He catches a cab on the street with his shoes still untied, spitting out the name of the veterinary office before he’s fully in the backseat.

Surprisingly, terribly, the emergency vet office isn’t empty at this time of night and Harry isn’t the only person in the waiting room. He is the one Zayn finds first though, sitting in a chair at the end of a row with a sweatshirt on and baggy sweat pants, flip flop sandals on his feet even though it’s nearing the middle of October.

Harry looks up when Zayn gets closer and suddenly he presses the palms of his hands to his eyes.  “Fancy seeing you here,” Zayn says when he sits down.

Harry drops his hands and uses his fingertips to wipe the corners of his eyes. “I haven’t cried this whole time,” he says, “And suddenly you walk in and I feel like Rachel McAdams in the rain scene in the Notebook.” He cracks a watery smile and Zayn shakes his head at him. How typically Harry to still have a terrible joke waiting on the edge of his tongue.

“Shut up,” Zayn says rolling his eyes. He puts an arm around Harry’s shoulders and tugs him closer, Harry falling like a house of cards into his body and taking a wobbly breath. “Everything’s going to be okay,” Zayn says right into his hair even though it feels like a prayer and not assurance.

Harry nods against him but doesn’t move to sit back up. Zayn runs his free hand back through Harry’s hair, curling his fingertips against his scalp which only makes him relax more deeply into Zayn’s hold. He’s too scared to ask questions about Paul – about how bad it seemed when Harry brought him in, whether he was still breathing when the vet took him. He doesn’t know how long they sit there silently, only that their breathing aligns and he can feel each time Harry blinks because his eyelashes flutter along Zayn’s collarbone. Eventually one of the veterinarian technicians come out and calls Harry’s name. When he sits up, Zayn is startled to miss his weight and warmth both so severely and suddenly.

She pulls up a chair across from Harry and Zayn, her scrubs printed with tiny rainbow cats. Zayn feels like that's a good sign. It turns out it is because she starts with, “Paul is going to be fine, Mr. Styles.”

Harry drops his face into his hands and takes a stuttering breath before finally looking up. Zayn can see the moisture in his eyes again and Harry blinks quickly to keep it away. Zayn doesn’t really think about it when he reaches for Harry’s hand and holds it in his lap, squeezing once as the technician explains what had happened. Paul had been choking on a ribbon, of all things. Somehow he’d gotten it lodged down his throat and then stuck. Harry looks on the edge of hysterics when she says it was better to be stuck in his throat than if he swallowed it and had it twisted it around his intestines.

“We’re going to keep him until tomorrow morning,” she says. “So you can go home for a bit and come back here in a few hours.”

Harry nods slowly and then asks if he can see his cat. “Sorry,” he says with a half a smile. “I just don’t think I’ll actually be able to walk out the door without seeing him. Not that you’re not a reputable veterinarian or anything,” he says quickly. Zayn laughs as he lets go of his hand and watches Harry follow the technician into one of the back rooms.

It’s no question that Zayn and Harry share a cab back to Harry’s apartment and both undress before getting into Harry’s bed. Zayn can’t imagine leaving him even after Harry says that Paul looked prettier than ever and insists that he’s okay. “Just let me take care of you for once,” Zayn said as he called them a cab and that got Harry to shut up for a bit. Harry is always the collected one between them – the one who laughs things off and makes light of every situation. But Zayn knows what he heard when Harry called him at the beginning of the entire ordeal, and that helpless fear in his voice isn’t easily forgotten.

They each lay on their respective sides of the bed and Zayn hates that he feels more at ease here than hours before in Zara’s bed. He tells himself it’s because he’d never slept there before; he ignores the part of himself that says he’s lying.Harry thrashes around the bed like an undersized whale for almost an hour before he settles into sleep. Zayn doesn’t comment on it but once Harry finally does go quiet, he sits up to make sure his eyes are actually shut and he’s not just playing an intense game of Freeze Tag. Harry makes the snuffled snore noise Zayn has become so used to and he actually laughs as he lies back down on his own pillow. He rolls onto his side and watches Harry’s sleeping form, brushing his fingers through the top of his hair. It’s slowly but surely growing out from the short cut he had in the spring. He’d mentioned earlier in the week he might cut it again but Zayn kind of hopes he won’t – he’s getting quite used to the way it feels silky between his fingers. Eventually, he pulls his hand back from Harry and tucks it under his head – it only takes a moment for him to fall soundlessly asleep.

In the morning they eat breakfast on Harry’s balcony with two sweatshirts on each to combat the October chill, and counting down the hours until the vet says Harry can come get Paul. In the meantime, Harry apologizes to Zayn. “I’m sure I woke you up last night,” he says. “And I’m sorry I’m such a mess.”

“You’re not a mess,” Zayn says honestly, “And I was already up.” That is also honest.

“You were?” Harry wraps his hands around his coffee mug and looks over at Zayn. “What were you doing up at two in the morning without me?” He smiles and wriggles his eyebrows.

The lie comes easily, “Just working on a manuscript. It wasn’t a big deal.”

Harry hums and takes a sip of his coffee. “It means a lot to me that you came.”

“Not a big deal,” Zayn repeats again with a bit of a smirk this time.

It is a big deal, though. It is a big deal because he hasn’t really thought about the fact he left Zara without any explanation until that very moment and he knows that the way he dropped everything for Harry is incomparable to what he would be willing to do for someone else. It’s a big deal because he finally found someone to like, someone to go on more than one date with him and he’s going to have to break it off for no reason bigger than he may very well be falling in unrequited love with his best friend.

*

“I’m just not going to date for a while.”

Harry throws his legs up on the couch, feet landing in Zayn’s lap in their usual position. “Why not?”

“I don’t think I’m ready right now,” Zayn decides. Paul takes up the space under where Harry’s ankles are lifted, lying up against Zayn’s thigh. He pets him absently with his fingertips. They’ve both become more attached to Paul – Harry immensely more so – since the choking incident two weeks ago. “I feel like I just led Zara down a path I wasn’t emotionally ready to commit to,” he says. What he means is that he’s slowly realizing he’s emotionally unavailable because he’s too attached to Harry and he has no immediate plans to stop it.

“Okay,” Harry says shrugging his shoulders. “I have a date on Saturday, by the way.”

Zayn can’t remember how many times the same phrase has been uttered in the last few weeks and months. He only knows that this time his heart lurches in his chest in a way he hopes Harry can’t tell. “Cool,” he says, not letting his voice be swayed by emotion. “With who?”

Harry flips the remote to the television in his hand. “Her name is Rebecca,” he says. “Met her at that battle of the bands I covered last weekend. She seems cool.”

“Cool,” Zayn says again.

“Do you know any other words?” Harry wiggles his toes in Zayn’s lap and laughs.

“Fuck off,” Zayn says, stifling his own laugh by biting his bottom lip.

“Don’t be rude,” Harry says. “I’m volunteering to watch Batman with you right now.”

“Volunteering,” Zayn snorts. “I bought you dinner and a new bottle of wine to make this happen.”

“I’m not a cheap date,” Harry says with a flick of his head. He smiles and Zayn laughs even though his lungs kind of hurt and he doesn’t want to consider why – not when he has Harry all to himself for the moment.

*

Zayn keeps falling head over heels for Harry as Harry keeps going on dates and there are some days when Zayn has to congratulate himself for being so stubborn he can’t just get over Harry like a normal person. He feels like he’s holding his breath when Harry goes out now and he thinks he laughs too loudly when Harry tells him how his dates have gone wrong.

“I think you should go on another date,” Harry says as they leave an art showing one evening in early November.

“I don’t want to,” Zayn says, sticking to what he told Harry before. “I’m still not ready.”

Harry casts a sidelong glance at him and shoves his hands in his wool coat. “I think you got your feet wet and then you ran away. You need to try again.”

“I don’t need to do anything,” Zayn bites harder than he should.

“Okay. Sorry.”

“It’s not like it’s working for you,” Zayn says, his mouth running ahead of his brain. “Your resilient in the face of rejection, though. I’ll give you that.”

Harry stops dead and Zayn wants to carve his own tongue out with a knife.

“That’s not what I mean,” Zayn says. He takes the two steps back to meet Harry on the sidewalk. “I just mean you’re better at it than I am. I can only be told, ‘No,’ so many times before I break.”

“Cheers,” Harry says. He drops his eyes to his boots and Zayn hates himself. “Nothing like the brutal reminder that I’m still alone to cheer me right up.”

“I’m sorry. That’s not what I wanted that to come out like,” Zayn says. He feels like there’s a knot in his throat. “And you’re not alone,” he adds. “You have me.”

Harry looks up at him and Zayn notices how tired he looks. He wants to run his fingers under his eyes over the dark circles and draw him a warm bath. He wants to hold his hand and kiss the mole on his cheek and none of that – none of that – is anything that belongs to him or that he is allowed to want.

“I know I can be an asshole,” Zayn says, swallowing. “But you’ve got me.”

Harry’s smile is slow to form and it’s not all the way there but it comes eventually. It doesn’t reach his eyes and Zayn desperately wants to know why. He doesn’t ask.

*

Zayn hates his job.

Or, tonight he hates his job.

His editor gave him a manuscript to review that is not coherent. They think it’s a diverse writing style but Zayn is so far from sure that’s what it is. There aren’t full sentences and not a single capitalized letter in the entire sixty-eight-thousand word brief. He loves unique but this is giving him a headache.

He gets off of the couch and leaves his laptop on the coffee table while he gets a glass of water. He wants to drink half a bottle of vodka before he faces the second half of his edits but he doesn’t have anything besides wine in his apartment. He’s almost (almost) considering running to the liquor store when there’s a knock on his door. He hasn’t rung anyone in and he’s definitely not expecting a visitor. In all honesty, Harry would be his only visitor and he’s supposed to be on yet another date.

Zayn pulls open the door thinking someone is lost and comes face to face with his would be only visitor who is supposed to be on a date. Harry is standing in the center of the doorway in black jeans and a floral top, his hair swooping up and back in the way it does when he’s put some effort into it. He smells like Tom Ford and his lips are shiny with the lip chap he loves so much.

“You are far too dressed up to be at my door,” Zayn says.

Harry half smiles but it falls immediately. “Rylee’s engaged,” he says. He raises his eyebrows and his lips twitch sadly. “She’s engaged,” he repeats.

“Fuck,” Zayn says out loud before backing away when he remembers he’s blocking the door and allowing Harry to come in. “Did she call?”

Harry, ever the most polite, bends in half to take off his boots before coming any further than the entry. “No,” he says. “She posted a picture.” He only has one boot off but he takes his phone out of his back pocket and gives it to Zayn. “Nine-Five-Two-Five,” he recites his password as if Zayn doesn’t already know.

Instagram is already open and ‘Rylee_Atkins’ profile is pulled up. Zayn has seen this picture in hundreds of variations over the last couple of years as the people he went to school with have settled into engagements – he even posted a photo like this once upon a time. He recognizes Rylee immediately with her blonde hair waterfalling over one shoulder and her infectious smile. The guy she’s with has his arms around her and they’re standing under a banner that announces, ‘We’re engaged!’

“Oh fuck,” Zayn repeats again as Harry straightens up, now shoeless.

“Yeah,” Harry says, his jaw clenching. He takes the phone back from Zayn but Zayn closes his fingers around it.  “Zayn?”

“What are you going to do?” Zayn asks. Harry is slightly bigger than him – both taller and stronger – but he thinks he could take him if Harry is about to do something stupid.

“Cancelling my date,” Harry says and Zayn lets the phone slip. “I don’t think I’m going to be the most pleasant company.”

“Gee, glad you showed up at my door, then.” Zayn pinches his left wrist to make himself shut up.

Harry glances up at him, his fingers gliding across his phone screen as he types out a text. “Yeah, well, you’re the only one who understands and won’t judge me for eating an entire pizza to myself.”

Zayn smirks, “Oh are we getting pizza? You didn’t mention.” Harry ignores him in favor of continuing his text and Zayn finally shuts his mouth. He pulls open his take out menu drawer and pulls out the pizza coupons he’s been saving as if waiting for this particular moment.

“Question,” Zayn says once Harry has thrown his phone on the couch and joined him in the kitchen to peruse pizza options. “Should we send her a pizza that spells out, ‘Fuck you’, in pepperoni?”

Harry laughs and it sounds like a surprise, the way he covers his mouth makes Zayn think it shocked him as well. “You would never.”

Zayn shrugs, “I’m not above it. We could also mail her an envelope of loose glitter or order an elderly stripper.”

Harry laughs and his eyes still shine when he finally stops. “Are those your best revenge ideas?”

Zayn smiles, “I don’t know. I haven’t thought about them that much, honestly.” He glances down at the pizza menu on the counter, “I just knew it would make you laugh,” he adds, quieter.  He can almost feel Harry’s smile burning on the side of his face. “What kind of pizza should we get?” He chances a look up and finds Harry staring at him.

“What?” Harry blinks quickly and clears his throat. “Sorry, what?”

“Pizza,” Zayn says, lifting up the menu. “What one?”

Harry looks at the menu and back at Zayn and then the menu again. “Um, one of those deep dish ones with cheese in the crust.”

Zayn’s eyes go wide. “What did you do with Healthy Harry? Has he been abducted?”

Harry smiles, “No, I’m just a firm believer that carb loading heals all wounds.”

“Let’s do it.”

They order a pizza far bigger than they need and each open a bottle of wine as is customary for the nights they spend on the couch. Zayn figures the best thing to do is watch terrible reality television so they settle in for a marathon of Real Housewives: Australia once the pizza shows up. It’s quiet for a while after that, Harry working much more quickly through the pizza than Zayn as if eating will keep his mind away from everything else.

“You know what’s funny,” Harry says halfway through their third episode. He drops a chunk of crust back in pizza box.

“What?” Zayn asks with his eyes still on the show before realizing Harry probably isn’t talking about the trashy nanny like the rest of the cast. He glances over.

“Rylee getting engaged,” Harry laughs harshly.

Zayn slowly folds the cardboard over the pizza box and sets it back on the table, pulling his leg up on the couch and settling back. “Why is it funny?”

Harry laughs and it sounds a big manic. “I spent a long time trying to figure out what went wrong. I didn’t sleep because I wanted to find the one thing I did that unraveled the whole thing.” He looks at Zayn, “And I couldn’t. So I thought maybe we really were too young and maybe it was too rushed.”

Zayn nods and taps his finger against the edge of his wine glass, waiting.

“But now that she’s engaged less than a year later to someone new?” His bottom lip wobbles and he bites it. “It makes me feel like the entire thing wasn’t timing or circumstance but it was me. Me, being myself, wasn’t enough for her and I can’t even figure out what about me is so fucking terrible that made her literally fall out of love with me without me even realizing.”

Zayn’s heart folds in his chest and his lungs don’t move the way they’re supposed for a moment. “Harry,” he starts without knowing where to finish.

“It’s funny,” Harry says with a smile. He drops  takes an enormous gulp of wine. “That she just gets to keep living and I’m the one stuck trying to put myself back together.”

Zayn swallows and hates that he doesn’t know what to say. Or, that he knows what he can say but it’s far too intimate for the moment, another shock to Harry’s fragile system he doesn’t want to be responsible for.

“Oh fuck,” Harry groans, pulling Zayn’s attention again. He presses his palms to his eyes, “Now I’m going to cry.” He drags his fingertips under the corners of his eyes and rubs his hands together. His eyes are still shining and he sniffs, his voice wet. “It’s so funny, I’m crying.”

Zayn actually laughs and it makes Harry laugh too, even as a stray tear rolls from the corner of his eye. Zayn barely sees it before Harry smacks it away.

“Oh babe,” Zayn says over his laughter. “You really are a mess.”

“Hey,” Harry glares at him as he takes another sip of wine. “This is a self-pity party, you can’t crash it.”

Zayn laughs and shakes his head, setting his own wine glass on the table and rocking forward on his knees to divide the space between them by half. “Can I intervene on the pity party for one hot second?”

Harry finishes his wine and sets the empty glass down. “Go ahead.” He clasps his hands in his lap and licks the corner of his lips.

“You don’t love her anymore either.” He knows it’s true without ever having said it out loud.

Harry swallows and meets Zayn’s eyes. “No, I don’t.”

“Rylee doesn’t deserve this,” Zayn says, his hand waving over Harry’s face. “You being you is one of the most amazing thing that has happened to this shit world and if someone wants to give that up, that’s not on you.” He presses his fingers to the top of Harry’s cheek and catches a tear before it can barely make a track. “I, for one, have no idea how someone could fall out of love with you so easily. If she has a magic secret, she should share it.” He’s said too much and he knows it right away. He goes to pull his hand back from Harry’s face, to laugh at what he’s said in order to make it inconsequential but before he can Harry’s fingers wrap around his wrist and hold him there.

It’s absolutely silent in that moment. Zayn can hear his heart beating in his ears and Harry’s slight inhale of breath as his gaze drips to Zayn’s mouth and back to his eyes. Everything is frozen and Zayn doesn’t want to be the one to move, even when Harry’s thumb starts to press on the underside of his wrist uncomfortably. Zayn knows everything will slip when one of them shifts and he doesn’t know what way the pieces are going to fall.

“Harry,” he barely breathes the word, a prayer waiting for an answer he needs.

Harry’s response is a turn of his head, so minute it’s not even noticeable, but then his lips are pressed where his thumb was and Zayn wonders if, hopes, he can feel his pulse racing under his mouth.

“Harry,” he says again, his entire body stiff. If Harry laughs and looks away now, he doesn’t know how he’ll recover, what he’ll do next.

Harry doesn’t.

He pulls Zayn’s wrist away from his mouth and the movement brings Zayn right into his body, their lips meeting messily in the middle. Zayn fights Harry’s grip to place his hand back on his jaw as he kisses him, feeling the muscle move beneath his palm as Harry opens his mouth to him. It’s nothing like when they were seventeen and drunk, playing around – this is something else altogether. Harry’s mouth is slick and strong, he tastes of wine and something so distinctly him that Zayn can’t make himself pull away. He presses closer, rises up on his knees to hold Harry’s face steady, drawing indescribable shapes with his tongue against Harry’s to replace the need to breathe.

Harry pulls back first, only slightly. His eyes aren’t shining anymore – perfectly clear and green, heat under the skin of his cheeks and enough to turn his lips an even darker pink. Zayn takes a shaky breath but he doesn’t want to have to speak, he doesn’t want to have to explain what just happened. Maybe Harry doesn’t want to either because he pushes Zayn backwards onto the couch and he follows with him, their bodies twisting together as they kiss again, more frantic now. Harry’s hands are on either side of Zayn’s neck, his legs sprawled with one thigh tucked between Zayn’s, the weight of his body making it impossible for Zayn to want to move.

Zayn’s head presses into the couch cushion from the heat of Harry’s mouth, his hands finding purchase on Harry’s hip and in his hair, scratching to a beat that doesn’t match the pace of their mouths but somehow makes Harry exhale harshly against his mouth, a whisper of a sound that has Zayn’s blood running hot. The next time Harry takes a breath, Zayn can’t help himself as he drags his lips down his jaw line and presses kisses down the column of Harry’s throat, licking and tasting what he’s wanted so badly. He drags his teeth on the hollow of Harry’s collarbone where his shirt parts. He waits for Harry to pull away but he only presses closer. Zayn runs his teeth again and then sucks on the skin, licking and biting to make a mark that will stay, egged on by Harry pushing closer and the tiny gasping sounds falling from his lips.

“Zayn,” Harry says, the first time he’s said anything since they started. Zayn tips his face back, his veins turning icy as he waits – will this the moment Harry is going to pull away and tell Zayn they can’t do this.

“What?” His voice is broken as he squeezes Harry’s hip. The smooth fabric of his shirt bunches and Zayn’s pinky brushes the warm skin underneath.

Harry closes his eyes for a moment and when he opens them, they’ve gone dark in a way that Zayn’s never seen and that makes him curl his fingers against his scalp even harder. “Take me to bed,” Harry says, and it’s not a question.

Here is where Zayn should be the one to stop it. Where he should tell Harry that he can’t do this – can’t take advantage of him on a night he came to find a friend.

Harry must sense his hesitancy because he shakes his head, presses his hips more firmly to Zayn’s and doesn’t blink. “Please, Zayn.”

This time Zayn is too selfish to say no and he thinks he’ll hate himself in the morning, may never be able to forgive what he’s about to do but he nods anyway. He nods and curls his neck up to Harry to press his lips where they feel like they could belong. “Okay,” he says against his mouth, “Okay.” It sounds like a promise he’ll have to break but he doesn’t think of that now.

Tonight, just for tonight, he’ll take Harry as his own – already knowing he’ll have to give him back in the morning and be left with mere pieces of himself in return.

*

Harry is an anomaly.

This is something Zayn has known since they were kids. He’s sensitive in the same way he’s defensive, emotional in the same way he can always find a joke, smart in the same way he can’t always see what’s right in front of him. But Harry in Zayn’s bed wearing nothing but a pair of black boxers is the kind of anomaly to drive Zayn absolutely wild.

Zayn wants to bite every inch of his skin but Harry is so soft under his tongue it doesn’t feel like he should. Yet when he drags his teeth over Harry’s nipple he arches so beautifully that Zayn can’t help to do it again but harder. His lips leave invisible marks over the swell of his hips and the indents of his abs before Zayn has even taken his own shirt off all the way – it’s just hiked up under his arms and hanging around his neck like a necklace. It’s unintentional but Harry took off his clothes in a hurry and Zayn was hard pressed to think of anything more important than laying him on his back and tasting the curves of his body.

“Come here,” Harry says as Zayn tucks his fingers into the waistband of his underwear and tugs. He leaves Harry’s pants half on as he crawls up his body, kissing the space at the center of his ribs because he can’t stop himself.

“What?” He asks, holding himself up over Harry’s body. He pushes his fingers through the front of Harry’s hair and smirks at the wayward direction each strand goes in. He didn’t expect to feel awkward with Harry beneath him but he definitely didn’t anticipate feeling this comfortable.

Harry reaches for the hem of Zayn’s t-shirt and frees it the rest of the way over his head, tossing it in the corner of the room. He smiles, “You can continue.”

Zayn flicks his chin and then kisses his lips, smiling. “You’re such a dick.”

Harry laughs and then he’s openly moaning as Zayn works his way down his body again. This time he pulls Harry’s boxers off all the way and slingshots them across the room just to keep from gaping. Aesthetically, dicks aren’t supposed to be pleasing but that doesn’t stop Zayn from noting how perfectly color matched the tip of Harry’s cock is to his lips and how prettily the blush on his chest compliments both.

He takes Harry in his hand slowly and tries to be steady. He’s wanted this for so long without realizing and realized it for long enough to know how good he wants to make this. Not just for him and his own wet dream come true but for Harry. If there’s only one night to have this, he wants to make it unforgettable.

The weight of Harry is heavy on his tongue, almost sweet when Zayn closes his lips around him and pulls him into the wet heat of his mouth. He licks the underside of Harry’s cock and then over the tip again, his hand running the length and trying to understand how he’s kept it hidden in his tight jeans for so long. He actually laughs at the thought, a spluttering sound that has Harry sitting up from his blissed out state where he’d been pulling his own hair a moment ago.

“What’s funny?” He asks.

The whole thing, Zayn thinks - Zayn still in his jeans and Harry naked, Harry’s cock hard and pulsing in Zayn’s hand and the two of them staring at each other with stupid smiles on their faces. Zayn shakes his head, “Just wondering how you’ve fit this baby in your jeans,” he says. He jerks Harry again in his hand and gets the sweet satisfaction of Harry biting down on his lip, hard.

“A little maneuvering,” Harry says, reaching down to mimic pushing his dick to the side. He can’t quite do it because Zayn refuses to loosen his hold.

“Learn something new every day,” Zayn says right before swooping down to take Harry in his mouth again, letting his eyes close to the sound of Harry’s long, drawn out groan. He tightens his lips and relaxes his throat, pressing down further until Harry lifts his hips and all but keens. His fingers find Zayn’s hair and he presses him down further but Zayn pulls off, one long line of spit connecting his lips to the tip of Harry’s dick.

“Sorry,” Harry says without sounding apologetic at all.

It only takes half a moment for Zayn to realize he’s apologizing for getting handsy and he smirks. “No, trust me, that was fine,” he says.

“Oh.” Harry licks his lip, his fingers twitching next to his hips on the bed. The unspoken, ‘So, why’d you stop?’ lingers.

“I want to fuck you,” Zayn says to the question no one asked.

Harry blinks and then bends his knees so his feet are flat on the bed, and spreads his legs slowly. “Thought you’d never ask,” he says and Zayn has to press his hand to his cock to keep from coming before he’s so much as taken off his jeans. Harry grins and Zayn has to look away.

“I might have to take that back,” he says, pursing his lips. “Honestly,” he laughs when Harry tries to kick his face. “I’m not sure that I have supplies.” He scoots up the bed to look in his nightstand and is faced with Harry attaching himself to his back, licking his neck and running his hands over his stomach, dipping his fingertips down into the front of his jeans.

Embarrassingly, beneath two books, a flashlight and a broken picture frame, Zayn finds a squished box of condoms and an orange bottle of lube. Harry cheers and falls backwards, pulling Zayn with him. Harry keeps Zayn down, pressing his heels against Zayn’s calves and unbuttoning his jeans with quick fingers. Zayn isn’t in a hurry to move.

He barely lifts his hips to help press his jeans down and then Harry’s hand is inside his boxers wrapping a hand around his dick and pulling in a steady continuous motion that makes him lose control of his legs, both kicking out to the side.  Harry does it again, this time biting into the back of Zayn’s shoulder and it’s enough for Zayn to pull up off him, standing by the edge of the bed and trying to catch his breath. Harry has the same devil may care smile he always does.

It blurs from there in a haze of sticky sweat. Harry starts to reach for the lube but Zayn stops him, wanting to do it himself. He tries to make it smooth, kissing Harry and stretching him – tries to make it pleasant when mechanics are anything but erotic. He studies Harry’s face as he doubles his fingers, the slight cringe and the way he relaxes – how his body resists and then pulls, his ribs ballooning in his chest. Zayn is careless with his kisses, up Harry’s thighs and across his belly, over his chest and against his neck. He swallows Harry’s sounds with his mouth and tries not to think too hard about what they’re doing and what it means. Anytime he does, Harry’s body will curve or he’ll make a sound Zayn has never heard and his mind goes blank of everything but: Harry.

Zayn rolls on the condom with his eyes on Harry’s hands, the way his fingers twitch like he might just reach for his cock where it lays angry red and wet. “Ready?” Zayn asks as Harry puts a pillow under his hips and spreads his legs like an invitation. Harry nods and bites his lip.

“It’s been—,” He rolls his eyes back as Zayn presses two fingers inside him again. “It’s been longer than you may think.”

Zayn huffs out a laugh and curls his fingers to watch Harry’s jaw drop in a silent yell before he pulls out slowly. “I’ll take care of you, yeah? Don’t worry about it.”

Harry nods and his hands relax at his sides again. Zayn knows the mutual trust between them is borne on months and years of friendship and he doesn’t take it for granted. He presses in slowly, his fingers guiding his way before he holds himself up over Harry’s body and pushes the rest of the way in. Harry’s back curves up and his head presses into the mattress, his eyes closing in a clench. Zayn watches as he did before – for the moment the cringe turns to something melted and Harry’s green eyes meet his again.

“Feel okay?” Zayn asks. His own toes are curled with the pressure to keep steady, to not hurt Harry.

“Feels amazing,” Harry says and he sounds drunk on something Zayn wants a sip of.

They move fluidly together in ways Zayn hadn’t expected. He doesn’t know if he picks the rhythm or if Harry does, only that they catch the same beat and move together, lips brushing and parting. Harry sucks on Zayn’s bottom lip until it goes sore and lets Zayn press his hands back behind his head so he can watch the slick wave of Harry’s body uninterrupted.

They start slow and build faster until Harry is panting and Zayn is reminding himself to inhale.

“Grab my hips,” Harry hisses over a gasp. Zayn lifts his head from where he was watching their bodies join together, his hips dipping.

“What?”

“Hold my hips down,” Harry repeats, his teeth clenched. As he says it, his hips press up into Zayn and punch the breath out of his chest. He doesn’t deny Harry’s request, his hands finding Harry’s hips and holding. “Harder.”

Zayn blinks and looks up again. “Are you always this bossy in bed?”

Harry, hand over heart, blushes at Zayn’s question stuttering over, “No.” He turns his cheek away from Zayn but it’s too much to resist. Zayn lets go of his hips to turn his face back, one hand holding his chin. “Sorry,” Harry apologizes and Zayn shakes his head automatically.

“No,” he says, kissing Harry’s mouth and circling his hips in slower curves. “Don’t be.” He kisses his neck and back up, apologizing for his big mouth. “Tell me what you want.” He smiles against Harry’s mouth and kisses the corner of his lips.

“I don’t,” Harry says and cuts off with a gasp as Zayn licks his nipple into his mouth again, biting. “I don’t usually tell,” he says.  “But it’s you.” Zayn nods and kisses Harry’s chin before picking the pace of his hips up again. He understands perfectly – Harry is asking because it’s Zayn, because he trusts him implicitly.

Zayn ignores the heat in his chest in favor of a question, “Hold your hips?”

“Please,” Harry says, his hands going back over his head to pull himself higher by the headboard. Zayn follows easily, bending his knees further.

“Gonna try something,” he tells Harry. His hands find Harry’s hips and then slide further until Zayn is holding his ankle. He hoists Harry’s right ankle and puts it over his shoulder and Harry closes his eyes, his breath coming out intense and short. The new angle allows Zayn to push in further and his balls clench tighter at the new sensation. He kisses the inside of Harry’s ankle and then grabs for his hips, holding him perfectly still as he slowly starts to rock again.

Harry releases a litany of expletives and calls out to god, his voice cracking and then coming back, each whine drowned by his groans and Zayn is completely lost. He presses back on Harry’s thigh with his body, chasing his own release and trying to get Harry right there with him. Harry doesn’t need his help, his hands in fists against the headboard and his body slick with sweat, undulating against Zayn with some kind of ferocity he’s never been given by another partner and he don’t thinks he’ll recover from. Zayn clenches his jaw to keep from coming, intense focus solely on Harry first. He can’t touch Harry and hold his hips down simultaneously. Harry must get it at the same time Zayn does, one of his hands unclenching the headboard to grab himself and then working his cock maliciously and quick without reprieve.

The first moment Harry starts to come, Zayn absolutely loses it. The tight clench of his body sends him over the edge without hope of return, fireworks behind his eyes and vibrations instead of a heartbeat in his chest. He opens his eyes to Harry’s come painted in arches over his stomach and pooling against his navel. Harry’s hands are thrown over his head again, the ballooning of his ribs less noticeable now as he starts to catch his breath. He’s not looking at Zayn, his eyes are closed, but his mouth is pulled in a silly kind of smile, barely drawn over his lips.

He doesn’t move as Zayn pulls out, his eyebrows pulling together only slightly and then relaxing. Zayn brushes a kiss against his ankle bone before letting his leg fall back to the mattress and that, somehow far beyond everything else they’ve done, feels totally intimate; Maybe because it wasn’t means to an end anymore.

Zayn leaves Harry laying there as he goes to the bathroom to clean up because he doesn’t know what else he wants to do. Or, he knows what he wants but it falls under what he still can’t have. He wants to clean Harry up with a wet rag, to drop kisses along his chest and face while they bask in the afterglow. He wants them to lie in bed until they’re strong enough to move to the couch and re-heat their pizza while they finish their wine. He wants to hold Harry when they go to sleep to remind him where they started the night – to remind him that anyone who could find themselves falling out of love with him has lost their damn mind. He wants to tell him that he’s been trying to fall out of love for months now and he can’t seem to hack it.

It turns out Zayn gets a little bit of what he wants. He comes back out of the bathroom to Harry wiping himself with a towel he found in Zayn’s dirty clothes and a sheepish smile. Zayn finds him a pair of sweats and then gets dressed himself only to find Harry reappearing in his bedroom a short few minutes later with cold pizza and napkins.

They don’t speak as Zayn turns on the television in his bedroom and they take their respective sides of the bed, the plate of pizza sitting between them. Desperate Housewives: Australia is still on so they settle into watching again as though the hour between the last episode and this one didn’t happen at all.

Zayn doesn’t know what to say and it doesn’t seem that Harry does either. How they address the elephant in the room of the fact they just fucked on the very bed they’re now sitting.

Zayn speaks first after another episode has passed and the pizza is gone. Harry takes the empty plate to the kitchen on a commercial break and then comes back to his place by Zayn, leaning back on the pillows and crossing his ankles out in front of him.  

“You feel better?” He asks and feels like an idiot. Like his dick, the healer of all things, made Harry feel better about his ex-fiancée’s new engagement.

Harry nods and then half smiles, “I just hate not knowing why it happened,” he says. “I feel like I had no control over it and it drives me crazy. Even if I don’t care about her anymore, I’ll always wonder what I did that made her turn away completely.”

Zayn understands in a way that he can’t articulate – he still wonders what made Michael sleep with someone besides him. Whether it was something he did or didn’t do well enough; if anything about him even mattered in the scheme of things. “Maybe you really fucked up at the cake tasting and she couldn’t take,” Zayn says. He smirks at Harry’s offended squeak. “Or she really fucked up by letting you go.” He shrugs and hopes Harry doesn’t see the blatant truth floating right between them. He knows he needs to stop dropping lines and praying Harry doesn’t notice.

“If only I would have chosen the red velvet cake,” Harry says with a sigh. Zayn collapses onto his back laughing, stretching his toes toward the end of the bed.

“Can I get you anything?” Zayn asks.

Harry shakes his head. “Actually,” he scrunches his nose like he’s thinking better of it and then asks anyway, “Can I just lay with you?”

Zayn doesn’t hesitate, “Of course, babe.” He holds his arm out to the side and lets Harry come to him. They fit together like missing pieces, one of Harry’s legs slotting between Zayn’s, his hand resting on Zayn’s stomach. His face fits in the curve of Zayn’s shoulder and Zayn’s arm can still aimless draw lines along his back.

The silence engulfs them again as they lay there – the show playing quietly in the background. Later, Zayn won’t remember falling asleep only that Harry’s weight on his chest felt like the anchor holding him steady.

*

Zayn wakes up in the middle of the night – his room darkened of everything including the glow of the TV. He lifts his head to find Harry but the bed is empty. He stays perfectly still trying to hear him elsewhere in the apartment but it’s painfully silent. When he reaches out for the spot where Harry had been he finds it cold. Harry didn’t just leave for a cup of water; he’s been gone for hours.

It’s hard to fall back asleep after that, Zayn’s mind racing in circles he can’t stop – not even with a pillow over his head. By the time the sun comes up and dots his room with light, he’s been staring at the ceiling for hours and replayed the entire night with Harry in an endless loop. His phone is on his chest, painfully silent and it stays that way. He gives himself into the afternoon until he calls Harry – unable to let everything sit still until he finds out why he woke up alone. He wants to tell himself there’s a good reason – he’s terrified the reason is anything but something good. When Harry doesn’t answer his phone, his stomach plummets.

He sends a text – _hope everything is ok._ – And then waits for a response that doesn’t come.

Zayn gets through Friday by keeping his mind on work but Saturday is excruciatingly slow. Anytime he goes to do something the back of his brain is snagged by a thought of Harry. It feels acidic – not knowing if they’re okay, if everything is ruined because Zayn took advantage of him. He should have stopped it before it even started, pulled away when it still made sense. He shouldn’t have let it go so far – and maybe that’s on him more than an emotionally compromised Harry. He wants to apologize but he doesn’t want to sound cheap. He wants to tell Harry that he thinks he’s in love with him but he doesn’t want everything to go down in flames.

The harshest voice is in his head reminds him that if neither one of them says something soon – everything is going to be burned anyway. Saturday passes to Sunday without a change and Zayn thinks he may develop a stress ulcer.

*

His phone rings Sunday afternoon and he nearly backflips off the couch to answer it, out of breath by the time he grabs it from the kitchen counter and presses it to his ear.

“Did you just run a fucking marathon or finish a marathon fucking?”

Zayn tips his head back on his neck but can’t help his stupid grin. “Hello, Lou.”

“Forget it, I don’t want to know why you can’t breathe,” Louis says. “I have news.”

“What news?” Zayn leans against the countertop.

“Nothing big,” he says and Zayn rolls his eyes. “Just gave a ring to a girl and asked her if she might want to have a ceremony to talk about it.”

“You are such a fucking idiot,” Zayn says over his own laughter.

“El’s the one who has agreed to marry me so we might want to look into her mental health as well,” Louis says and Zayn can hear the smile in his voice.

“Congratulations,” Zayn finally adds. “It’s about time you proposed.”

“You sound like Eleanor.”

“Thanks,” Zayn says as he crosses his arms.

“Anyway, I wasn’t calling to tell you that,” Louis says. “I was calling to see if you’d like to rent a suit and stand next to me sometime next year back home.”

“I hate you so much,” Zayn says with his hand over his face, a smile threatening to split his lips. “Are you asking me to be in your wedding?”

“What wedding?”

“Does everything have to be like pulling teeth?” Zayn leans forward onto his elbows on the counter. “Ask me properly to be in your wedding or I won’t do it.”

Louis exhales loudly, “Zayn Malik, will you be my bridesmaid?”

Zayn shakes his head and laughs despite himself. “I will,” he says. “And I’ll hold your dress when you piss as well.”

“Thank you,” Louis says primly and Zayn is slapped with a wave of longing to see him in person. “You were more difficult to tell than Harry – he started crying the moment I said the word ring.”

“Wait, you told Harry before me?”

Louis actually cackles across the line. “El and I made a bet if you’d be pissed about it,” he yells away from the phone, “You owe me a drink, love.”

“I’m not pissed,” Zayn says. He rubs the aching spot between his eyes. “Did you get the housewarming gift I sent?”

“I did,” Louis says. “I like to sit on the couch and hold Harry’s pillow while I burn your candles. Always makes me feel like I’m in a proper romance novel.”

“Probably inspired you to propose,” Zayn says.

“I’ll take my own credit on that,” Louis drawls.

They slowly dissolve into talking about the smaller details of their lives – the things not covered in grand announcements or Instagram posts. Toward the end of the call, Zayn debates bringing up Harry but he doesn’t know what to say. Or, he already knows that Louis will tell him to get his head out of his ass and call Harry but he doesn’t really want to hear that. They hang up with empty promises to call more often but Zayn feels significantly more buoyant as he sets his phone back on the counter and goes about making lunch. Louis has a tendency to do that.

As evening rolls around, Zayn pours himself a glass of red and picks up his phone. He presses Harry’s contact with a full mouthful of wine that he swallows over a wince. He’s not going to let them ignore each other until what happened goes away – mostly because it’s not going anywhere – and he needs to know where they stand. It’s been forty-eight hours and he can’t take the not knowing anymore. Harry answers on the second ring and Zayn’s heart stops beating.

“Zayn, hey,” he says and he sounds remarkably unaffected.

“Hi,” Zayn says. He takes another gulp of wine to steel himself. “Everything okay?”

“Yeah, good,” Harry says with a light voice and Zayn can hear the lie. “I went to a cider festival yesterday for a story and then just spent today cleaning my closet.”

“Good,” Zayn says for lack of anything else. To avoid beating around the bush he asks, “Do you want to talk about what happened?” He thinks he can hear Harry’s shallow inhale. He must have thought if he kept things light, Zayn wouldn’t poke.

“Not really,” he says and his voice sounds duller than before. “If that’s okay.”

It’s not okay, Zayn wants to say. It’s not okay to act like it didn’t happen when he can’t get the way Harry’s abs trembled under his lip out of his mind. “Sure, yeah,” he says instead. He hates himself.

“Thanks.”

There’s almost relief in his voice and Zayn wants to chuck his phone across the room. He shouldn’t have given Harry an easy out. “Do you want to do something this week?” If he can get him alone, he can make him talk – he knows he can.

“I’m busy,” Harry says quickly.

“What day?” Zayn drinks more wine as he feels Harry snaking from between his grip.

“All of them,” he says quietly, almost a whisper.

“Harry.” Zayn shakes his head. “What about next week? Are you busy all the days next week too?”

Harry sighs and Zayn can almost picture him pinching the bridge of his nose the way he does when he’s uncomfortable. “I just said I don’t want to talk about what happened.”

“And I agreed to that,” Zayn says, his voice taking on an edge. “Now I asked you to hang out and you’re suddenly busy every day until forever?”

“I just need some time.” Harry says it but it sounds like he’s pleading.

“Time?” Zayn drinks more wine. “What do you mean time?”

“Time away from you.” His forced peppiness from the beginning of the call has dissolved to nothing.

“Away from me,” Zayn repeats. He knew it was bad – he didn’t know it was this bad.

“Just like, to figure some stuff out. Not a long time,” Harry says, like he’s unconvinced. Zayn is too.

He wants to ask how long it takes to forgive your best friend for sleeping with you after you asked him to – if that’s a week or more like a lifetime. Zayn feels helpless and not at all like he’s had a weight lifted from his chest.

“Okay,” he says slowly because he’s at a loss for another word to use instead.

“Okay?” He can hear the shock in Harry’s voice as he repeats it.

Zayn huffs in frustration. “You said you wanted time and I’m saying that’s fine. Is that not what you expected?”

“No, I did,” Harry says, suddenly back pedaling. “That’s good, yeah.”

“Great,” Zayn says, suddenly biting off his words. “Why don’t you give me a call when you’re done taking your time?”

Harry audibly swallows and Zayn hates himself even more. He’s hurting Harry after he already fucked everything up. He might make a pact of silence and celibacy after this phone call.

“Okay.”

Zayn nods and realizes Harry can’t see him. “Okay. Talk to you later then.”

Harry hangs up without saying another word and Zayn face plants into the side of the couch.

*

Zayn is an unusually patient person. Too many people mistake his patience for laziness but that’s not exactly it. He just has the will to wait things out and not push ahead of a schedule he can’t foresee. Almost a week after he’s last talked to Harry – his patience is well-tested and wearing thin.

He misses Harry. He misses him in dull moments and when he has something he wants to talk about. He misses doing nothing with Harry by his side and he misses their lunch dates and coffee dates. He bargains with the universe – stupid things like he’ll watch a Nicholas Sparks movie without complaint if Harry just calls him. He bargains bigger things – he’ll never tell Harry how much that night meant to him, if he can forgive him.

He’s also mad at Harry. He’s mad that Harry is making him wait and holding this over him like Zayn is the only one at fault. The last he checked – they’re both responsible for the way things went down and they both need to figure out how to get around it. That feels like the bottom line, though – they have to get over it. It was a clearly a one-off that ended in complete disarray.

Under the anger and under the way he misses him – perhaps on top of it – Zayn is hopelessly in love. He wants to hold Harry’s hand under tables and kiss him under street lights, he wants to spend the night with him and wake up with him, he wants to memorize his body and burn it on the back of his eyelids, he wants to hear Harry read poetry out loud and he wants to kiss constellations between Harry’s hip bones. And he would give it all up – every half –dreamed fantasy – just to have Harry back as his best friend. He would lock his heartache into a box no one can ever see or touch, he would pretend like the one night they had was a simple mistake, he would do it all if Harry could only let him.

*

When Zayn makes his mind up to confront Harry – he doesn’t give him any time to back out. He’s halfway home from work on a Tuesday when he decides that he can’t wait any longer and he marches right past his own apartment complex and keeps walking.

Someone else is coming out of Harry’s lobby as Zayn walks up so he catches the door behind them and slips inside. He keeps his eyes down as he gets on the elevator – hopeful he won’t be kicked out before he does what he came to do. What he came to do – he’s not sure he’s gotten all the details down yet but he knows that when he leaves he doesn’t want Harry to hate him and he doesn’t want Harry to be upset at him. He’s praying to all available deities that he’s able to make that happen.

He takes a deep breath at Harry’s door and then knocks. It comes out quieter than he wants so he turns his knuckles into more of a fist and pounds on Harry’s door. He’s in the middle of apologizing to Harry’s neighbor for being so loud when Harry opens the door.

“Oh,” Zayn says with his hand still held in the hair. “You answered.”

Harry is in a pink shirt with his last name written over the pocket and black jeans with green socks. He crosses his arms when he looks at Zayn. “You knocked.”

Zayn nods because, yeah, that’s true. “Can I come in?”

Harry steps back silently and Zayn takes it as the only invitation he’s going to get. He jumps as Harry shuts the door but covers it up by reaching for Paul where he’s lying on the couch. Paul actually hisses as he jumps from his cushion and crawls under the coffee table.

“Guess everyone’s mad at me,” he says, recoiling. He turns around to face Harry and catches his lips twitching into an almost smile before he straightens his face.

“What are you doing here?” Harry asks, his tough guy voice nothing for the sneaking smirk Zayn just saw.

“I’m done waiting for you to get over yourself and call me back,” Zayn says. He slips his hands in the pockets of his trousers, glad he’s dressed for work and hopes it looks intimidating.

“Zayn.” Harry rubs his eyes with his hands, “What do you want from me?”

Zayn has a lot he can say to that but he doesn’t. He can’t. “I want us to both admit that it was a mistake and move the fuck on.”

Harry swallows and flexes his jaw. “Say what was a mistake?”

Zayn blinks instead of answering. “You know what.” He feels like he’s eight years old and fighting with his sister except Harry is decidedly, definitely, not his sister.

“I want you to say it.”

Zayn’s eyebrows pull together without his permission and he licks his bottom lip. If Harry wants him to drive the nail in as deep as it will go, he will. “Sleeping together was a mistake. Fucking you was a mistake and I wish it hadn’t happened.” Part of it is the truth. He wishes he could take it back – he wishes he would have left the door open to have a shot with Harry rather than slamming it shut because he couldn’t control himself.

He’s not prepared for Harry’s reaction, the way he seems to bite back on his molars when he nods, his eyelashes fluttering at double speed when he exhales.

“What?” Zayn crosses his arms and only just stops himself from stomping his foot.

“Nothing,” Harry says quietly. He clears his throat and lifts his chin.

Zayn feels like he’s balancing and he doesn’t know what or why. “So it was a mistake.”

“Okay,” Harry says. He looks away and Zayn watches the muscle at the back of his jaw move before he meets Zayn’s eyes again.

“We agree?” Harry shrugs and Zayn suddenly can’t breathe. “What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”

“Nothing,” Harry bites back. He swallows again and turns away. He goes toward the kitchen and Zayn watches him touch his face in the suspicious area of his eyes.

Is he crying? Zayn is too scared to ask out loud. “Say it was a mistake,” Zayn says without moving. He waits for Harry to turn toward him again. “If we agree it was a mistake, I want you to say it.” Harry’s gaze hits the ground and Zayn can’t take it. “Say it, Harry. Tell me it was a mistake and you regret it. We’re on the same page, aren’t we?”

Harry finally meets his eyes and there’s nothing behind them – no tears or darkness, no clarity or emotion.

“H. Just say it was a fucking mistake so we can move past this.”

“It was a mistake,” Harry says.

Zayn’s heart freefalls in his own body but he stands perfectly still. He knew this was coming, he begged Harry to say it, demanded that Harry stomp on his heart one more time. “Okay,” he says, repeats Harry’s sentiment right back to him. There’s a knot in his throat but he pushes it down and tries to smile instead. “Now that’s sorted, should we go have dinner and pretend this isn’t all terribly awkward?”

He scoots back around the couch and goes for the front door, a new determination in his step. He said he would give anything for the chance to have Harry back as his friend and if it only cost him his heart then the least he can do is gorge himself at the Italian diner down the road. With one hand on the door he turns back – Harry hasn’t moved.

He’s still halfway in the kitchen, toes pointing in and hands wringing together. Zayn is scared, terrified, to ask what’s wrong. “Harry?” He tries, swallowing over his own breath and exhaling hard.

“It was a mistake,” Harry says and Zayn can’t believe they’re coming back to this again. He’s heard it enough in the last two minutes.

“Please don’t do this,” Zayn says, shaking his head.

“It was a mistake,” Harry says again, somehow even stronger. “It was a mistake because I’m in love with you and I can’t fucking pretend that one night was enough because it meant more to me than it did to you. It was only a mistake because it meant too much.”

Zayn stays perfectly still. “When?” He asks instead of what.

“Always, I think." He swallows, "But I didn't really know until just before that night at Haze.” Harry looks like he’s going to break but he keeps his gaze steady. “That night you said we should hook up but I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t give one night when I suddenly knew I wanted to give you each night and every morning too.”

“Harry.”

“And now we’re here and it happened anyway.” Harry throws his hands up and they slap against his thighs, “I fucked it up and I couldn’t even stay to apologize because losing you scares the shit out of me. And if I can only be your friend and nothing more than I’ll still take it.” He says it like he’s swallowing glass and then he takes a steady inhale but even that is shaky. “So if you still want to get dinner, we can do that.” He smiles and it comes out wrong as he presses his fingertips to the corners of his eyes.

Zayn smirks, “You’re in love with me?”

“Please don’t make me repeat it.” Harry’s cheeks are splotchy and he’s clearly mortified to have told Zayn. Zayn wants to run over to him and hold onto him like a monkey on a tree but he doesn’t move.

“How could you be so blind?” Zayn scrunches his hands in his hair and almost laughs. Harry’s wounded gasp reminds him of what Harry doesn’t know. “That night,” he knows they both know what one without saying it, “I barely kept myself from getting on my knees and telling you everything you mean to me. I pressed it silently into your skin because I was so scared to say it out loud and then you were gone in the morning. I didn’t know what to think.”

Harry tries to interrupt but Zayn doesn’t let him. Harry makes do with staring at the floor and Zayn doesn’t stop him from that.

“You were so busy running from me and avoiding me you didn’t give me a chance to tell you that one night isn’t what I was after. I wanted everything and convinced myself to hold onto one little piece, to let myself have just one to keep me happy. But, H, one little piece of you is never going to be enough for me.”

Harry looks up, green eyes glassy and his lip tucked under his teeth, head shaking slowly back and forth.

“I want it all or I want nothing.”

Zayn thought he understood it. He thought he heard Harry say he wanted him too but as they stand there in complete silence he feels as though he’s missed it all. He doesn’t think he breathes, he’s not sure his heart is beating – even his blood seems to slither as he waits for Harry to say something.

“Oh my fucking god.”

It’s not a declaration but he’ll take it, especially when it comes with Harry’s voice and his smile threatening to break each of his words, his dimple curving in his cheek.

“Tell me about it,” Zayn asks, his lips tucking under as he tries to contain his own smile.

Harry presses the heels of his hands to his eyes and tips his head back; taking a shuttering breath and Zayn can’t take it. What felt like miles a minute ago is now only feet he crosses easily, his hands slipping around Harry’s waist and settling on his lower back.

“This is good, yeah?” He says once Harry takes his hands from his face. Zayn cups his jaw and runs his thumb along the line there, over his bottom lip. He’s allowed to do this now, he’s allowed to stare and touch and he doesn’t think he’ll ever get over it.

“It’s good, yeah,” Harry says, his eyes getting teary again. Zayn gently runs his thumb under Harry’s eye and kisses his cheek. “How did we not know?” Harry asks, catching Zayn’s hand in his and holding it between their bodies.

Zayn shakes his head, his hand on Harry’s waist sliding under his shirt so he can feel the heat of his back, so he can remind himself that this is real. “I don’t know, love.”

Harry kisses him then and he tastes like a memory, like something Zayn’s been chasing, like everything he’s been waiting for. And standing there, in that moment, all he can think is that maybe they’ve always known it would come down to this. They chased and tasted, tried and walked away and it came back to this, to each other. Maybe this whole time they were just looking for a reason to say it, a reason to stay.

Zayn deepen the kiss easily, his tongue pressing between Harry’s eager lips and intimately learning the lines of his teeth, the curl of his tongue. He starts to press Harry back toward the couch and he goes easily then too, his hands curling in the front of Zayn’s shirt. He turns his head to speak and Zayn moves his mouth to his neck, tracing the strong lines with his lips.

“I thought we were going to dinner?” Harry says and Zayn doesn’t have to look up to see his terribly cheeky smile. The only thing Harry can do after that is squawk as Zayn pushes him back onto the couch with his body and follows after seamlessly – both of them laughing against each other’s mouths because after all this time they finally made it back home.

 


End file.
